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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT; 



The Lost Art of Meditation 



The Lost Art of 
Meditation 



By 
J. W. MAHOOD, D.D. 

Author of "The Art of Soul Winning," "The 

Victory Life" "The Master Workman" 

"Make Jesus King," etc. 




New York Chicago Toronto 

Fleming H. Revell ' Company 
London and Edinburgh 



Copyright, 191 1, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 



~BV*i< 






New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 123 North Wabash Ave. 
Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 



>CI.A2S6471 



Foreword 

SHALL we say it is a lost art — this 
withdrawal within the veil ? Shall we 
say that this busy, restless age thinks 
it has outgrown the need for listening to the 
voice that speaks only to the soul ? That 
saintly mystic, John Tauler, said that one 
might learn more in one short hour from the 
inward voice than from man in a thousand 
years, and if he had reference to the deep 
things of God he was probably right. Yet 
in these days how little time the average 
Christian gives to the inward look and the 
inward voice. 

Now religion is both a science and an art. 
In recent years much attention has been 
given to the scientific side. The age has 
been one of discovery — discovery in me- 
chanics, in astronomy, in therapeutics, in 
social economics. This spirit, of exploration 
has also extended into the realm of religion. 

5 



6 FOREWORD 

And this is well. The Church of Jesus Christ 
owes much to the patient investigation car- 
ried on by men of great devotion to the in- 
terests of the kingdom of God. But it must 
not be forgotten that while science discovers, 
art creates. In our enthusiasm for the dis- 
covery side of religion it is possible to forget 
the creative side. The art of Christian char- 
acter building has been much neglected, and 
where this is neglected it is so easy to allow 
ourselves to drift on the tide of worldliness 
and spiritual indifference. We need a re- 
naissance in the art of Christian living. 

In this intensely practical and explorative 
age we have gone to the opposite extreme 
from the mystical and contemplative. In- 
deed so little time is given to meditation that 
it may well be called a lost art. We have no 
longer time to ponder the great truths of life 
and destiny. With breathless haste we rush 
after something new among the things of 
time and sense, and leave no room or 
strength for the hour of contemplation. 

" Meditation/' said Rodriguez, "is the be- 
ginning and ground of all good. It is the 



FOREWORD 7 

sister of spiritual reading, the nurse of 
prayer, and the director of good actions. 
It causes true devotion to spring up in our 
hearts. It is that which, next to the grace 
of God, most of all warms the heart and the 
will, and produces the prompt disposition to 
do virtuous deeds." 

Haste and worry are anything but helpful 
to that purest devotion and loftiest thought 
which are essential in the making of char- 
acter. He who sees God's mountains from 
the window of the speeding express train, or 
from the thronging streets of mountain cities, 
will never see their real glory. One must 
stand alone in the vast solitudes surrounded 
by snow-capped giants and let the mountains 
grow on him to experience the soul touch of 
majesty. And he who would know God 
must be much alone with God. 

What means this low tone of Christian 
experience, and this shallow, self-satisfied 
profession of religion? What means this 
thoughtless, irreverent, jocular way of speak- 
ing of holy things, so preyalent to-day? 
Has not the hurry and fever of this busy age 



8 FOREWORD 

crowded out the time for meditation and 
prayer ? We have been too busy to wait in 
the inner chamber with God, and we have 
lost soul poise and cloudless vision. Our 
minds have not felt the grip of eternal veri- 
ties, nor have we bathed our souls in the 
pure white light that streams from the 
Shekinah of His secret presence. 

J. W. M. 

Sioux City, Iowa, 



Contents 

I. Meditation and Prayer . . .11 

II. Meditation and Soul Development . 25 

III. Meditation and Nature . . 37 

IV. Meditation and the Intellectual Life 53 



V. Meditation and Revelation 

VI. Meditation and Calvary 

VII. Meditation and the Bible . 

VIII. Meditation and Preaching . 

IX. Meditation and Worship 

X. Meditation and Reserve Power 

XI. Meditation and Soul Winning 

XII. Meditation and Vision 

XIII. Meditation and Action 

XIV. Helps to Meditation 



63 

77 

89 

101 

117 

131 

H3 

•53 
169 
181 



MEDITATION AND PRAYER 

But thou, when thou prayest, enter 
into thine inner chamber, and hav- 
ing shut thy door, pray to thy Father 
who is in secret, and thy Father who 
seeth in secret shall recompense 
thee. 

— Jesus, 



MEDITATION AND PRAYER 

WHEN that old philosopher, Aristotle, 
saw dimly the light that leads to 
God and declared that there was 
one path open to the Eternal — the way of 
contemplation — it was a foregleam of the true 
Christian's highest privilege — intimate and 
direct communion with God. 

11 No one becomes perfect on a sudden," 
said an old writer ; " it is by mounting, and 
not flying, that we come to the top of the lad- 
der. Let us therefore ascend, and let medi- 
tation and prayer be the two feet we make 
use of to do so. For meditation lets us see 
our wants, and prayer obtains for us relief 
from God. The one makes us discern the 
dangers that surround us ; the other gives us 
happy escape from them. Prayer is tepid 
without meditation." 

l 3 



14 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

Some of the mystics taught that the con- 
templative life was a spiritual stage to which 
only a few could attain. It was 

The Mystics 

an experience for pinnacle mo- 
ments, they said, when the soul stands in 
God's presence with unveiled face. But the 
New Testament teaching would certainly in- 
dicate that every child of God may live the 
life of sweet and blessed fellowship provided 
the mind is stayed on Him. " Within my 
heart is the eternal adoration/ ' said the saintly 
Tersteegen, reminding us of the Apostle's 
words, " Pray without ceasing. In every- 
thing give thanks : for this is the will of God 
in Christ Jesus concerning you." To have 
formed the habit of prayer, or to be always in 
the spirit of prayer, or in soul touch with 
God is, according to Paul, the privilege .of 
every Christian. 

Now this high privilege cannot be obtained 
or maintained save as meditation is joined 
with prayer. Meditation upon the word of 
God, upon the goodness of God, upon the 
providence of God, quickens the desire for 
prayer and gives life and power to prayer. 



MEDITATION AND PRAYER 15 

No matter how frail the physical life, or how 
humble the social life, meditation will bring 
the prayer life to its full bloom. 

What gave Catherine of Sienna her power ? 

There was no helpful environment in her 

early life. She was the young- 

Catherine J J t* 

of sienna est Q j twe nty-five children and 

the daughter of a wool dyer. She had very 
few social and educational advantages. Her 
own father tried to force her to live a worldly 
life. But in her hours of meditation God be- 
came her teacher. The Spirit unfolded the 
higher things of life in such a way that when 
she came to womanhood she was sought for 
by kings and queens and popes and princes 
that they might have her advice and her 
prayers. She went in person to Avignon and 
persuaded the vacillating pope to return to 
Rome. She rebuked him for his neglect of 
the spiritual interests of the church. She 
wrote Gregory XI thus : " Temporal things are 
failing you from no other cause than from 
your neglect of the spiritual. ... I wish 
and pray that the moment of time that re- 
mains (for you) be dealt with manfully, fol- 



16 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

lowing Christ, whose vicar you are, like a 
strong man." Whence had this woman of 
lowly birth and meagre educational advan- 
tages this power to rebuke sinners in high 
places ? No one who studies her marvellous 
life can fail to conclude that the secret of it 
all lay in her habit of meditation and prayer. 
She w r as the friend of God. She believed 
herself to be the espoused of the King of 
heaven ; and believed too that she had re- 
ceived the stigmata — the imprint of the five 
wounds of Christ. 

Meditation is indispensable to prevailing 

prayer. The greatest and best men the world 

has ever known have cultivated 

Prevailing 

prayer ^ habit of withdrawing from 

the world to look into their own hearts and 
to let God speak to them in the secret place. 
When the distractive noises of the world are 
hushed then God's voice is heard more 
plainly, and the vision of His presence is seen 
more clearly. When Moses was alone in 
the desert he saw the flaming acacia tree 
and heard the voice of God ; when Jacob was 
alone by Jabbok's brook the angel of the Lord 



MEDITATION AND PRAYER IJ 

drew near and gave him a new name. It is 
through the portals of silence that we must 
pass to meet God face to face. 

Said the saintly Fenelon, " Do not devote 
all your time to action, but reserve a certain 
portion of it for meditation upon eternity. 
We see Jesus Christ inviting His disciples to 
go apart, in a desert place, and rest a while, 
after their return from the cities, where they 
had been to announce His religion. How 
much more necessary is it for us to approach 
the source of all virtue, that we may revive 
our declining faith and charity, when we re- 
turn from the busy scenes of life, where men 
speak and act as if they had never known 
that there is a God ! " 

Now prayer waits upon reverence. In- 
deed, where there is little reverence there is 
usually little prayer. To pray 

Reverence 

well one must be deeply reverent. 
But meditation upon the great truths and 
great works of God is essential to reverence. 
"Meditate on great things," said William 
Law, " and your soul will grow great." The 
surest indication of littleness of soul may be 



18 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

seen in disrespect for sacred things. " How 
shameful," said Saint Francis, "to allow 
oneself to fall into vain distractions when one 
is addressing the Great King. We should 
not speak in that manner even to a respecta- 
ble man." 

Prayer waits upon thoughtfulness. How 

thoughtlessly we often rush into the presence 

of the King of kings ! How little 

Thoughtfulness 

preparation of heart and mind we 
sometimes make for audience with the eternal 
God I In the " Saints* Everlasting Rest," that 
classic of devotional literature, the author has 
this to say concerning reverence in our ap- 
proach to God : " Be sure you set upon this 
work with great solemnity of heart and mind. 
There is no trifling in holy things. ' God will 
be sanctified in them that come nigh Him.' 
Labour, therefore, to have the deepest appre- 
hensions of the presence of God, and His in- 
comprehensible greatness. If Queen Esther 
must not draw near 'until the king hold out the 
sceptre/ think, then, with what reverence thou 
shouldest approach Him, who made the worlds 
with the word of His mouth, who upholds the 



MEDITATION AND PRAYER 19 

earth as in the palm of His hand, who keeps 
the sun, moon, and stars in their courses, and 
who sets bounds to the raging sea ! Thou 
art going to converse with Him, before whom 
the earth will quake and devils do tremble, 
and at whose bar thou and all the world must 
shortly stand, and be finally judged. . . . 
Labour also to apprehend the greatness of the 
work which thou attemptest, and to be deeply 
sensible both of its importance and excel- 
lency. If thou wast pleading for thy life at 
the bar of an earthly judge thou wouldst be 
serious, and yet that would be a trifle to this. 
If thou wast engaged in such a work as David 
against Goliath, on which the welfare of a 
kingdom depended, in itself, it were nothing 
to this. Suppose thou wast going to such a 
wrestling as Jacob's, or to see the sight which 
the three disciples saw in the mount, how 
seriously, how reverently, wouldst thou both 
approach and behold ! If but an angel from 
heaven should appoint to meet thee, at the 
same time and place of thy contemplations, 
with what dread wouldst thou be ftlled ? Con- 
sider, then, with what a spirit thou shouldst 






20 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

meet the Lord, and with what seriousness and 

awe thou shouldst daily converse with Him." 

Prayer waits upon faith. That attitude of 

will and heart towards God whereby we find 

it easy to take that which God 

Faith 

has promised can only be at- 
tained by meditation upon the goodness and 
faithfulness of God. Faith claims ; faith 
takes. John MacNeil used to say, " If a man 
has a credit balance of two hundred and fifty 
dollars in his banking account, and draws a 
check for fifty dollars, he does not need to go 
to the cashier and ask for fifty dollars ; he 
presents his check and claims it, for it is his 
own. When God gives the Christian a 
definite promise it is the Christian's privilege 
to claim, to receive the thing promised." 

The two greatest dangers to which we are 

constantly exposed in these days is a lost 

sense of sin, and a lost sense of 

Two Great ' 

Dangers q^ j t j g SQ eagy tQ be j nflu _ 

enced by certain modern ideas of sin, and to 
think of it as mere " embryonic goodness," 
or " righteousness in state of formation," 
or "an hallucination of the mortal mind," 



MEDITATION AND PRAYER 21 

until sin loses all its heinousness, and then 
Calvary all its merit. Meditation and prayer 
will develop a sensitiveness to sin and a con- 
sciousness of its awfulness. Richard Baxter, 
after months of meditation upon the calamity 
of sin, wrote : " You can never know the evil, 
nor the desert of sin, until you know 

"i. The excellency of the soul which it deformeth. 

2. The excellency of the holiness which it ob- 

literates. 

3. The reason and excellency of the law it 

violates. 

4. The excellency of the glory it despises. 

5. The excellency and office of reason which it 

treadeth down. 

6. The infinite excellency, almightiness, and holi- 

ness of that God against whom it is com- 
mitted." 

Only meditation and prayer will develop a 
sense of the reality and immanence of God. 
The soul comes face to face with the Eternal. 
The heavens are no longer empty, and life is 
no longer a mere dream life to the man of 
prayer. Wherever he goes he bears upon 
his face the consciousness of heavenly com- 



22 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

panionship. If any man has a right to speak 
at this point it is surely John Bunyan, the im- 
mortal dreamer. He has this to say : " It is 
a great thing to be a closet-Christian, and to 
hold it; he must be a close- Christian that 
will be a closet-Christian. When I say a 
close-Christian, I mean one that is so in the 
hidden part, and that also walks with God. 
Many there be that profess Christ, who do 
oftener frequent the coffee house than their 
closet ; and that sooner in a morning run to 
make bargains than to pray unto God and 
begin the day with Him. But for thee, who 
professest the name of Christ, do thou depart 
from all these things ; do thou make con- 
science of reading and practicing ; do thou 
follow after righteousness ; do thou make 
conscience of beginning the day with God. 
For he that begins it not with Him will hardly v 
end it with Him ; he that runs from God in 
the morning will hardly find Him at the close 
of the day ; nor will he that begins with the 
world and the vanities thereof be very capa- 
ble of walking with God all the day after. It 
is he that finds God in his closet that will 



MEDITATION AND PRAYER 23 

carry the savour of Him into his house, his 
shop, and his more open conversation. When 
Moses had been with God in the mount his 
face shone ; he brought of that glory into the 
camp." 

It has been said that our great need to-day 

is more prayer. But it must be the prayer 

that is ioined to meditation if it 

A Great J 

opportunity prev ails. Such prayer will be 
intercessory. Such prayer will be mighty. 
This is an age of vast opportunity for the 
Church of Christ. Everywhere fields are 
white unto harvest. At home and abroad 
there is need of a great army of workers, 
And, to be equal to the opportunities of so 
many needy fields, they must be men of un- 
shakeable convictions and mighty in prayer. 
If there would come to our churches and col- 
leges and homes a great revival of interces- 
sory prayer how speedily the kingdom of our 
Lord and Saviour would triumph ! To the 
secret place of meditation and prayer let us 
hasten then that we may have that prepara- 
tion of the inner life that will make us mighty 
for God. 



24 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

B /ilbeMtatton 
My soul, practice being alone with Christ ! 
It is written that " when they were alone He 
expounded all things to His disciples." Do 
not wonder at the saying ; it is true to thine 
experience. If thou wouldst understand thy- 
self send the multitude away. Let them go 
out one by one till thou art left alone with 
Jesus. . . . Hast thou ever pictured thy- 
self the one remaining creature in the earth, 
the one remaining creature in all the starry 
w r orlds? In such a universe thine every 
thought would be " God and I ! God and I ! " 
And yet He is as near to thee as that — as 
near as if in the boundless spaces there 
throbbed no heart but His and thine. Prac- 
tice that solitude, O my soul ! Practice the 
expulsion of the crowd ! Practice the stillness 
of thine own heart ! Practice the solemn re- 
frain " God and I ! God and I ! " Let none 
interpose between thee and thy wrestling 
angel ! Thou shalt be both condemned and 
pardoned when thou shalt meet Jesus alone ! 

— George Matheson. 



MEDITATION AND 
SOUL DEVELOPMENT 

There is nothing that makes men 
rich and strong but that which 
they carry inside of them. Wealth 
is of the heart, not of the hand. 
-—John Milton. 



' . I * • 



■.■*,*■'*«* 



II 

MEDITATION AND SOUL 
DEVELOPMENT 

SAID Robert Browning in his introduc- 
tion to u Sordello," " My stress lay on 
the incidents in the development of a 
soul : little else is worth study." This reminds 
us of what Socrates says in his " Apology": 
" For I do nothing but go about persuading 
you all, old and young alike, not to take 
thought for your persons, or your properties, 
but first and chiefly to care about the greatest 
improvement of the soul." What words are 
these for a time like this ! We are still cov- 
ered with the grime of this materialistic age 
through which we have been passing, and 
need the uplifting and cleansing power of a 
new ideal if we would bring to their richest 
fruitage the heaven-born powers of these im- 
mortal souls. " The path of the just is as the 
shining light that shineth more and more unto 
the perfect day." There must \)e soul devel- 
opment if there would be spiritual manhood 

27 



28 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

as surely as there must be bodily develop- 
ment if there would be physical manhood. 

Now in the realm of Biblical study we have 

higher criticism ; in the realm of astronomy 

we have the higher mathemat- 

Higher ° 

Athletics j cs . j n t j ie rea i m f m ental train- 

ing we have the higher education ; in the 
realm of spiritual culture why not have the 
higher athletics ? Ignatius wrote to Poly carp 
and said, " Watch as God's athlete " ; and 
Paul writing to Timothy speaks of a " gym- 
nastic unto godliness." 

In the realm of economics we may say that 
our own country leads the world; in the 
realm of politics we may think that she holds 
first place among the nations ; in Olympic 
games our physical supremacy may have 
been demonstrated. But what are we profited 
if in economics, and politics, and muscular 
development the world's primacy belongs to 
us, if in morals and spiritual understanding 
we are wanting ? The development of the 
body is necessary to the highest manhood 
provided that development does not interfere 
with the growth of the entire nature. But to 



MEDITATION AND SOUL DEVELOPMENT 29 

be a Swaboda in the realm of the physical 
and a Mark Hopkins in the realm of the in- 
tellectual, and a pigmy in the realm of the 
spiritual, is to be a monstrosity rather than a 
man. 

Robert Browning loved to make life one 

great Olympic game where spiritual athletes 

contended for supremacy. His 

A Spiritual * J 

Gymnasium herQ wag Qne W ^ Q neyer tume ^ 

his back but marched breast forward : 

" Never doubted clouds would break, 
Never dreamed though right was worsted, right 

would triumph, 
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 
Sleep to wake." 

Now God has provided means for the devel- 
opment of every faculty of the spiritual na- 
ture. There is a spiritual gymnasium for 
God's athletes. The equipment is complete. 
The inner life may be symmetrically and fully 
developed ; but not without effort. " Let us 
give diligence/' said the writer of that trea- 
tise on spiritual athletics, " to enter into that 
rest;" "Let us run with patience the race 
that is set before us looking unto Jesus, the 



30 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

file leader ; " and again " Let us press on unto 
perfection/' 

Among those things that are necessary to 
spiritual mastery meditation has a large 
place. We must often look within to know 
our need. Meditation will create soul hunger. 
All our spiritual lameness and blindness and 
nakedness will appear in the quiet of the in- 
ner chamber. Then there will come into the 
life a great unrest to be satisfied only in 
Christ. We will want to fly to Him who 
said, " Come unto Me all ye that labour and 
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 

Meditation will aid physical mastery. The 

highest soul development will come only after 

we have, by the grace of God, 

Physical > J & » 

Mastery brought the physical nature into 

subjection. The body must be kept under 
perfect control if we would live at our best. 
Paul was concerned for this and he said, " I 
buffet my body, and bring it into bondage : 
lest by any means, after that I have preached 
to others, I myself should be rejected." He 
said, too, " Know ye not that your bodies 
are members of Christ . . . glorify God 



MEDITATION AND SOUL DEVELOPMENT 3 1 

therefore in your body." Meditation is not 
dreaming. Meditation is not for the spirit 
only, nor for the mind only ; it is for the 
whole man. Meditation will help open every 
window of the life to the Light from heaven, 
and that means that every power of the con- 
secrated body and mind and spirit shall be 
quickened and strengthened. We must, by 
the grace of God, keep the physical in sub- 
jection to the spiritual, for we are essentially 
spiritual beings. Meditation will help us to 
a right estimate of the relation between body 
and soul, and give us to see more clearly that 
our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. 

Meditation will give power of vision. Noth- 
ing is more important to soul growth. To 
Power have the vision that apprehends 

God, and sees all things in their 
true relation to God, is worth striving for. 
Indeed to fail here is to fail in all things that 
are worth while. " Where there is no vision 
the people perish." These are days of nar- 
row vision. Some fix their eyes upon one 
principle of nature, or one law of life, or one 
doctrine of the Word of God, and seem to 



32 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

see nothing else. Would to God that we 
might have the vision that is high enough 
and wide enough to see that there is a 
whole universe of truth constantly unfolding. 
Would to God that we might have a vision 
clear enough to see over our own little preju- 
dices and notions, and gain the world view. 
To many the greatest things in life are so 
vague and shadowy as to seem almost un- 
real, because of a lack of spiritual vision. 
Meditation will develop the inner life. It 
will take the veil off the face of reason. 
When united with a living faith it will help 
us see the things of the soul life in their true 
perspective. It is when prayerful meditation 
has its place in daily life that 

" Faith lends its realizing light, 
The clouds disperse, the shadows flee ; 
The invisible appears in sight, 
And God is seen by mortal eye." 

Meditation will encourage the spirit of 
praise and thanksgiving. This, too, is essen- 
tial to soul growth. Goethe's mother used 
to say that when her son had a grief he 
turned it into a poem and so got rid of it. 



MEDITATION AND SOUL DEVELOPMENT 33 

If we could always turn our griefs into songs 

how soon they would be forgotten. And 

until we lose our worry and heart 

Praise and •* 

Thanksgiving disquiet in some symphony of 
praise there can never be rapid spiritual 
progress. The hurry and rush of modern life 
has crowded out everything save that which 
is intensely practical, and praise is not sup- 
posed to be practical. But here is where we 
blunder. Praise is the most practical thing 
in human life. We were created to praise 
and glorify God. Life's highest efficiency 
can never be reached until we fulfill the pur- 
pose of our creation. Then only can there 
be real soul development. Praise is life's 
halo, and it was Susan Ferrier who said, 
" My deepest wish is that life may never lose 
its halo." It must be kept bright and glow- 
ing through constant meditation on the good- 
ness of God. 

" Solitude/' said Cecil, " is my great ordi- 
nance.' ' There are heaven-born gifts and 
powers in our lives of which we will never 
be conscious until in solitude they are re- 
vealed and developed. Look at John 



34 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

Bunyan. Did not Bedford jail bring out the 
best that was in him ? Look at John Milton. 

The way of Did not si g htIess e y es reveal 
glories he would otherwise never 
have seen? Look at David Livingstone. 
Those eight or nine years in the solitudes of 
Africa during his early missionary career pre- 
pared him as nothing else could have done for 
the remarkable series of explorations and vic- 
tories that resulted in opening a continent to 
Christ. Or look at Paul the Apostle. From 
a Roman dungeon Paul gave us his best. 
Because Paul was a prisoner at Rome what 
wealth of spiritual teaching, and what glimpses 
of the unseen and eternal are ours ! There 
his life came to its richest fruitage. And 
earthly life for us will only reach its highest 
bliss, and these heaven-born faculties their 
fullest fruition when we are much alone with 
God. 



MEDITATION AND SOUL DEVELOPMENT 35 

Be strong ! 
We are not here to play, to dream, to drift, 
We have hard work to do, and loads to lift. 
Shun not the struggle, face it, 'tis God's gift. 

Be strong ! 
Say not the days are evil — who's to blame? 
And fold the hands and acquiesce — O shame ! 
Stand up, speak out, and bravely, in God's name. 

Be strong ! 
It matters not how deep intrenched the wrong, 
How hard the battle goes, the day, how long ; 
Faint not, fight on ! To-morrow comes the song. 

— Maltbie D. Babcock. 



MEDITATION AND NATURE 

I meditate on all Thy doings : 
I muse on the work of Thy hands. 

— David, 



Ill 

MEDITATION AND NATURE 

" God is the perfect Poet 
Who in creation acts His own conception. M 

IT is only when with reverent and prayer- 
ful hearts we consider the glory of His 
works that we can read God's poem of 
nature. If one has the open eye and the 
clean heart he can say with Kipling, 

" It is enough that through Thy grace 
I saw naught common on the earth. " 

There is nothing common to the man who 
has a vision of nature. Earth, and sea, and 
sky are full of wonder and majesty. 

"Earth's crammed with heaven 
And every common bush afire with God ; 
But only he who sees takes off his shoes.' ' 

There is a sacramental glory in the humblest 
object of God's care and providence. " Con- 
sider the lilies of the field, how they grow ; 
they toil not, neither do they spin : yet I say 
unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was 

39 



40 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

not arrayed like one of these/ ' Joseph Par- V 
ker was surely inspired when he wrote : 
"The meanest insect that flutters in the 
warm sunlight is a grander thing than the 
proudest marble statue ever chiselled by the 
proudest sculptor.' ' Linnaeus, the great 
scientist, saw a little flower unfolding, and 
said, " I saw God in His glory passing before 
me and I bowed my head in worship ; " and 
Carlyle wrote, "One may look through a 
small window and see the Infinite. ,, 

As the words of the book express the mind 
of the writer, so do the wonders of nature ex- 
press the mind of God, and 
LoVeoT 01 create in the reverent and loving" 

Nature ° 

heart a song of praise. Thus it 
was with St. Francis of Assisi who, as he jour- 
neyed with his companions up and down the 
lovely vale of Umbria, sang his Canticle of 
the Sun f declared by Renan to be " the most 
perfect utterance of modern religious senti- 
ment." It came from a heart thrilled with 
the beauties of nature, and glowing with ex- 
ultant praise. Translated by Matthew Ar- 
nold it runs as follows : 



MEDITATION AND NATURE 41 

11 Oh, most high, almighty, good Lord 
God, to Thee belong praise, honour, and 
blessing I 

" Praised be my Lord God with all His crea- 
tures, and specially our brother the sun, who 
brings us the day and who brings us the 
light ; fair is he and shines with a very great 
splendour. Oh, Lord, he signifies to us 
Thee! 

11 Praised be my Lord for our sister the 
moon, and for the stars the which He has set 
clear and lovely in the heaven. 

" Praised be my Lord for our brother the 
wind, and for air and for clouds, calms and 
all weather by which Thou upholdest life in 
all Thy creatures. 

11 Praised be my Lord for our sister water, 
who is very serviceable unto us and humble 
and precious and clean. 

11 Praised be my Lord for our brother fire, 
through whom Thou givest us light in the 
darkness ; and he is bright and pleasant and 
very mighty and strong. 

11 Praised be my Lord for our mother the 
earth, the which doth sustain and keep us, 



42 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

and bringeth forth divers fruits, and flowers 
of many colours, and grass. 

" Praised be my Lord for all those who par- 
don one another for His love's sake, and who 
endure weakness and tribulation ; blessed are 
they who peaceably shall endure, for Thou, 
oh, Most Highest, shalt give them a crown. 

" Praised be my Lord for our sister, the 
death of the body, from which no man es- 
capeth. Woe to him who dieth in mortal 
sin ! Blessed are they who are found walk- 
ing by Thy most holy will, for the second 
death shall have no power to do them harm. 

" Praise ye and bless the Lord, and give 
thanks unto Him, and serve Him with great 
humility.'' 

How few there are in this restless age, 
even among Christian people, who stop. to 
Having Eyes meditate upon the handiwork of 

They See Not ~ , ~ - - 

God. So many have eyes but 
see not. Even where nature is most prodi- 
gal in her beauty men seem not to see. Un- 
der the shadow of those great snow-crowned 
peaks in the Rocky Mountains I found men 
who seemed to have no appreciation of the 



MEDITATION AND NATURE 43 

majesty all about them. With their hearts 
and eyes upon gold and pleasure they exist 
in God's beautiful world more like the beasts 
of the field than like God-created and God- 
endowed men. A poor artist said to a 
coarse rich man : " When the sun rises you 
see something like a golden guinea coming 
out of the sea. I see, and hear likewise, 
something like an innumerable company of 
angels praising God." 

Meditation upon the glories of nature will 
bring heaven near to earth, and make spir- 
itual things seem more real. 

Brings Heaven ° 

Near The every-day things of life will 

take on new interest, and the soul will be 
able to interpret nature as the revelation of 
the Divine. I stood on the eastern shore of 
a beautiful lake, set like a gem 1 in the heart 
of one of our great states, and saw the sun 
descend towards the western horizon, sur- 
rounded by draperies of cloud that seemed 
to spread themselves out like the ramparts of 
a mighty city. Then it seemed to me as I 
stood and looked that I could ,see domes of 
amethyst and gates of pearl and walls of jas- 



44 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

per and streets of gold. It was as if the City 
of God itself had come down to earth ; and 
the slanting rays of the setting sun on the 
shimmering waters of the lake made a shin- 
ing pathway that led straight to the City of 
Light. And there is scarcely a day that 
passes but one may see in sunrise and sun- 
set, in field and forest, in snow flake and dew- 
drop, in mountain and valley, in seashore 
and ocean the majesty of the King. 

Meditation upon nature, when coupled 

with the grace of God in the heart, will bring 

a holy quiet and confidence. The 

Gives Quiet y * J 

and confidence peace fulness of flower and field 
and sky will pass into the life. Wordsw r orth 
tells how nature transforms the life of one 
who meditates on its beauty and glory : 

" She shall lean her ear 
In many a secret place 
Where rivulets dance their wayward round, 
And beauty born of murmuring sound 
Shall pass into her face." 

It was Wordsworth's vision of God in 
nature that gave him that remarkable gift of 
glorifying the common things of every day. 



MEDITATION AND NATURE 45 

It was no illusion, as Matthew Arnold would 
have us believe, but a real insight into the 
majesty and glory of that which God had 
made. Through meditation on nature he 
had come to a true conception of nature. 
He saw that all things shared the life of 
God. Whittier, in that beautiful apprecia- 
tion of Wordsworth, expresses it clearly : 

The violet by its mossy stone, 
The primrose by the river's brim, 

And chance sown daffodil have found 
Immortal life through him. 

The sunrise on his breezy lake, 
The rosy tints his sunset brought, 

World seen, are gladdening all the vales 
And mountain peaks of thought. 

Art builds on sand ; the works of pride 
And human passion change and fall ; 

But that which shares the life of God 
With him surviveth all. 

Meditation on nature will give us new 
confidence in the faithfulness of God, The 
^ r. . ., . promise made to Noah will have 

The Faithful- r 

nessofGod a new meaning . "While the 
earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and 
cold and heat, and summer and winter, and 



46 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

day and night shall not cease." We shall 
then see with the psalmist that the days and 
the nights have voices : 

" Day unto day uttereth speech, 
And night unto night showeth knowledge/ p 

God will speak to the inquiring heart in a 
multitude of ways : 

" To him who in the love of nature holds 

Communion with her visible forms, God speaks 
A various language." 

The flowers will speak God's messages to us 
— not in the English, or the French, or the 
German tongue, but in the language of 
beauty and design and delicacy of tracery. 
The stars, too, will have voices, and the 
heavens will declare the glory of God : 

" What though in solemn silence all 
Move round the dark terrestrial ball ; 
What though no real voice nor sound 
Amid their radiant orbs be found ; 
In reason's ear they all rejoice 
And utter forth a glorious voice ; 
Forever singing as they shine, 
The hand that made us is Divine/ ' 



MEDITATION AND NATURE 47 

All nature will remind us that we have a 
covenant keeping God, and He who cares 
for and clothes the lilies of the field will 
surely take care of us for whom He made the 

lilies. 

Meditation on nature will give us a new 
conception of the power of God. A reverent 

The Power Study ° f the S™^ f ° rCe S of 

electricity and gravitation and 
chemical affinity should bring into the life 
a new consciousness of the presence of an 
omnipotent God. The smallest things in 
life will have a new interest if we see God's 
power unveiled in them. Sir Oliver Lodge 
says that if a dewdrop were expanded to the 
size of a planet the molecules of hydrogen, 
of which it consists, would resemble oranges 
or footballs ; and now scientists tell us that 
within each molecule is a stellar system 
which is an almost exact reproduction of our 
solar system, and that all we find in the 
planets, both as to their orbits and their 
speed, we find in the flying electrons of an 
invisible atom of matter. 

Then, too, who can meditate on the glory 



48 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

and majesty of the heavens as revealed in 
these later days through the medium of tele- 
scope and spectroscope and photographic 
lens, without having a new vision of the 
power of God? Look, for instance, at that 
wonderful group of worlds known to us as 
the Pleiades. Only seven or eight are vis- 
ible to the naked eye. But we now know 
that there are nearly three thousand suns in 
that beautiful constellation. And we know, 
too, that such infinite distances separate 
some of these blazing suns that it takes light 
at least three or four years to go from one 
pleiad to another. Alcyone — the brightest 
of the group — gives out twenty-four hundred 
times more light than our sun, and is sixty 
times more brilliant than Sirius. Such is the 
glory and majesty of that mighty sun that 
when the great scientist, Maedler, studied it 
through the telescope he declared that it was 
the centre of the universe, the seat of the 
Eternal, the throne of God. Lord Kelvin 
declared that there were at least one thou- 
sand million suns scattered through space, 
many of them much larger than our sun. 



MEDITATION AND NATURE 49 

Who can think of the mighty forces that 
must control and preserve these myriad 
worlds without an overwhelming conscious- 
ness of the power of our God ? 

Meditation on nature will give a new ap- 
preciation of the holiness of God. In these 

The Holiness da y s we are in danger of losing 
sight of the holiness of God. 
We think of God's omnipotence and omni- 
presence and omniscience and forget about 
His holiness. Perhaps this is the reason 
why many have come to think lightly of 
sin. Dean Church said : " This deep au- 
stere note of religion runs like an undertone 
through all the Old Testament, and the New. 
The Christian does not shudder at mere 
omnipotence. But he bows his head and 
worships the unutterable holiness of the 
Father." To have the vision of God's holi- 
ness is to cry out like Isaiah, " Woe is me 
for I am undone," or like Peter, " Depart 
from me for I am a sinful man." But that 
cry, when from the depths of the heart, 
always brings peace and gives new zest to 
life. 



SO THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

What a freshness and interest all life would 
have if we knew that in flaming letters on 
every leaf and flower and blade of grass were 
written the words, " Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord 
God Almighty ! " But to the meditative soul 
they are written there. Not in the Latin of 
the text-books to be sure, but in the language 
of design and beauty. Every flower is " God's 
angel of the grass," and every clover blossom 
is an amethyst to him who, like Enoch of 
old, walks with God. 



H f)gmn 

Still, still with Thee, when purple morning breaketh, 
When the bird waketh, and the shadows flee ; 

Fairer than morning, lovelier than daylight, 

Dawns the sweet consciousness, I am with Thee. 

Alone with Thee, amid the mystic shadows, 
The solemn hush of nature newly born ; 

Alone with Thee in breathless adoration, 
In the calm dew and freshness of the morn. 

As in the dawning o'er the waveless ocean, 
The image of the morning star doth rest, 

So in this stillness, Thou beholdest only 
Thine image in the waters of my breast. 



MEDITATION AND NATURE 5 1 

Still, still to Thee ! as to each newborn morning, 
A fresh and solemn splendour still is given, 

So does this blessed consciousness awaking, 
Breathe each day nearness unto Thee and heaven. 

When sinks the soul, subdued by toil, to slumber, 
Its closing eyes look up to Thee in prayer ; 

Sweet the repose beneath Thy wings o'ershading, 
But sweeter still, to wake and find Thee there. 

So shall it be at last, in that bright morning, 
When the soul waketh, and life's shadows flee; 

Oh, in that hour, fairer than daylight dawning, 
Shall rise the glorious thought — I am with Thee. 

— Harriet B. Stowe. 



MEDITATION AND THE 
INTELLECTUAL LIFE 

By all means use sometimes to be alone. 

Salute thyself: see what thy soul doth wear. 
Dare to look in thy chest ; for 'tis thine own : 

And tumble up and down what thou findest there. 
Who cannot rest till he good fellows finde, 
He breaks up house, turns out-of-doors his minde. 

— George Herbert, 



IV 

MEDITATION AND THE INTELLEC- 
TUAL LIFE 

" T 'T NOWLEDGE is power," is a trite 
|^ saying glibly uttered by many. 
But that depends. There are some 
kinds of knowing that weaken and destroy 
the noblest in man. There is a way of ac- 
quiring knowledge that makes the " know- 
ing " of little use to us. There are human 
sponges that absorb everything they touch. 
But their knowledge is of little or no practical 
value to them. Only that knowledge is 
power which can be used in the development 
of higher manhood and womanhood — which 
can be used — mark you. " A thing known," 
says a certain writer, " is a thing incorporated 
into the human personality and made spirit- 
ual." Knowledge, to be used effectively, 
must be made a part of the very life. This 
can be done only by meditation. When some 
great truth has taken hold of the inmost 

55 






56 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

being, then knowledge is power. When the 
" I know " comes with the definiteness of a 
great conviction, which has seemed a real 
experience, then knowledge is power. 

An old man, recalling some of the most in- 
teresting incidents of his early life, told how 
he had once heard Jenny Lind 

The " I Know " 

sing that beautiful aria from 
Handel's Messiah, "I Know that My Re- 
deemer Liveth." Said he : " The ■ I know ' 
of that woman's voice has thrilled my life 
through all these years." That was musical 
knowledge with power. And when in any 
department of human achievement the " I 
know " of a great conviction thrills the life, 
then knowledge is power. 

I. Meditation on great themes will pro- 

dtice positive?iess of conviction. " One man 

with conviction is worth a hun- 

Positive 

Conviction dred men w j th mere op i n } ons ^ 

said John Stuart Mill. We have too many 
colourless opinions and too little real assurance 
to-day. Victor Hugo said of Queen Anne 
that no qualities of hers ever attained to vir- 
tue, and none to vice ; which was another 



MEDITATION AND INTELLECTUAL LIFE 57 

way of saying that she had no distinct and 
positive convictions. The man who is not 
settled in his thought concerning certain 
great principles and verities of life will be 
like a reed shaken with the wind. There will 
be no stability in his Christian life, and he 
will be the easy prey of every passing re- 
ligious fad and fantasy. From this class 
come the people who are led captive by every 
silly adventuress of some new religion. They 
have not allowed the truths of God to take 
deep root in heart and mind and so are the 
ready victims of every false prophet. To 
compel the mind to dwell long on the great 
truths of God, until from every angle we get 
a glimpse of their majesty, will produce in 
the mind a positiveness of conviction that 
will give steadiness of faith and set our feet 
upon a rock. 

2. Meditation on great themes encourages 
intellectual vigour, Christianity is ever an 

inteiiectu i a ^ to ^ e development of mind 

power. This accounts for the 

fact that so many of the great discoverers in 

the realm of scientific knowledge have been 



58 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

earnest Christians. When the mind dwells 
much on the great truths of God it will be all 
the keener to unlock the secrets of nature. 
" The wisdom of life," says an Oriental prov- 
erb, "is to throw a noose over the stars." 
Men are constantly seeking to unlock the 
secrets of the great cosmic forces. But the 
man who has taken time to commune with 
nature's God will have a distinct advantage. 
Nature's secrets will open more easily their 
fast-closed doors to him whose thoughts have 
been stirred by visions of the Infinite. It is 
in " Les Miserables " that we find this strik- 
ing paragraph : 

" Thought, meditation, prayer — these are 
great and mysterious radiations. Let us re- 
spect them. Whither go these mysterious 
irradiations of the soul? Into the darkness.; 
that is to say, to the light." 

Meditation on great themes means a surer 
mental grasp of the problems of every-day 
life. The darkness that so often perplexes 
will usually yield to quiet, prayerful thought. 
It is said that one of the greatest of English 
engineers, when confronted with some tre- 



MEDITATION AND INTELLECTUAL LIFE 59 

mendous difficulty in his work, would shut 
himself up in his room and refuse to eat any- 
thing or see anybody. He would so aban- 
don himself to serious thought concerning the 
problem in hand that in two or three days at 
most he would come forth serene and con- 
fident, walk to the spot, and give direction 
to the work. In this way he accomplished 
some almost impossible engineering feats, 
throwing bridges across impassable chasms, 
and tunnelling mountains that seemed to defy 
the skill of man. Prayerful meditation will 
mean intellectual quickening, and life's daily 
duties will be better done and more quickly 
done. 

3. Meditation on great themes will lead 
us to a better knowledge of ourselves. It was 
Self . Coleridge who said, " There is 

knowledge - . . . 

an art of which every man 
should be master, the art of reflection. By 
reflection alone can self-knowledge be ob- 
tained. " There is no man more likely to 
be deceived concerning himself than the 
man of shallow thought. He >who cultivates 
the daily habit of thinking on some great 



60 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

theme will soon find that the inner eye of the 
soul sees more clearly the soul's need. There 
is nothing more dangerous to high thinking 
than that subtle pride of intellect which keeps 
us from seeing our own frailty and igno- 
rance. But w r hen we shut ourselves up with 
some great and good thought our own little- 
ness and weakness will be reflected by its 
pure light, and we will seek again the source 
of all true wisdom and love and powder. Not 
until like Paul we can say, "But far be it 
from me to glory, save in the cross of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, through w T hich the world 
hath been crucified unto me, and I unto the 
world/ ' will there be real soul satisfaction 
and rest of heart. 

4. Meditation 071 great themes will often 
give to the life an undyi7tg influence. It will 
An undying project individuality through 

Influence . xt 11 

generations to come. Newell 
Dwight Hillis well says : " Moses will con- 
trol all our jurists to-morrow because he, 
spent forty years in the desert reflecting 
upon the principles of justice. Paul had the 
honour to fashion our political institutions 



MEDITATION AND INTELLECTUAL LIFE 6 1 

because he gave twelve years of general 
preparation and three years of special ap- 
plication to the study of individual rights. 
Milton tells us that he spent four and thirty 
years of solitary and unceasing study in ac- 
cumulating his material for a heroic poem 
that the world would not willingly let die. 
. . . Pasteur gave our generation much 
because for thirty years he isolated himself 
and got much to give." 

The Church of God needs great intellectual 
leaders, men who will think through its great 
social problems, and be able to turn the con- 
secrated life of the Church into the channels 
of highest service. We need men who will 
stand in advance of all the Church's activities 
and beckon us onward towards the paths 
that lead to the highest good. We need 
men who have more than a one-sided view 
of our many complex social conditions, men 
who are large enough in thought, and wide 
enough in sympathy, and Christly enough in 
life to see all sides of these great interests. 
Such men come only from the place of quiet 
waiting and meditation where the Holy Spirit 



62 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

touches heart and brain. And such men will 
leave behind them an influence for good that 
will gather impetus with the circling years. 



O Holy Spirit, teach me that " the fear of 
the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." I 
submit myself to Thy instruction. Thou 
canst unlock every treasure house of the 
intellect. Thou canst lead the way through 
every labyrinth of the great world's thought. 
Thou canst guide to the highest peaks of 
reason's wonderful realm. I would go to 
school to Thee, and let Thee teach me the 
higher wisdom. I cannot penetrate the deep 
things of nature and grace unless Thou dost 
open the eyes of my understanding and en- 
large my soul. In the quiet of this secret 
place speak to me now words that shall 
waken every slumbering faculty of my 
heaven-born nature; and thus Thou wilt 
help me to live at my best for my Lord. 



MEDITATION AND REVELATION 

For now we see in a mirror, darkly ; 
but then face to face : now I know 
in part ; but then shall I know fully 
even as also I was fully known. 

—Paul 



V 
MEDITATION AND REVELATION 

THE march of true science is always 
forward towards the heights of 
revelation. There is no conflict 
between reason and faith, and never can be. 
They are comrades, but one is fleeter and 
stronger than the other and goes farther. 
Just as the microscope and telescope go 
farther than the naked eye so faith outruns 
and goes infinitely farther than reason. Or 
it might be said that faith is reason's tele- 
scope. So there is no conflict between 
science and revelation. They, too, are com- 
rades, but one is always in advance. Just 
as surely as God's prophets have always 
been in advance of the people leading them 
on, so revelation has always beckoned to 
science. 

And the spiritual will ever lead the 
natural. The nearer science approaches the 

65 



66 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

goal of some definite knowledge concerning 
the mysteries of nature the more ready she 
The spiritual w1 ^ t> e to uncover her head and 

and the Natural t .~ . 1t 

cry, " Great and marvellous are 
Thy works, O Lord God, the Almighty; 
righteous and true are Thy ways, Thou king 
of the ages." 

There was a time when the atomic theory 
was considered the end of wisdom concern- 
ing matter. We had three conditions of 
matter — solid, liquid, and gaseous. But now . 
we have radiant matter : now we have elec- 
trons with all their wonderful symmetry and 
ethereal energies. Now we have almost an 
exact reproduction of the solar system in the 
atom that only so recently was supposed to 
be indivisible. Now we know that the tiny 
and invisible electrons, in the curve of their 
orbits and the speed of their flight, rival the 
stars in their courses. Thus the more we 
know of the mysteries of nature, the more 
we know of the glory and power and maj- 
esty of God. 

And every pathway of true knowledge 
leads towards the spiritual and thus towards 



MEDITATION AND REVELATION 67 

light, and thus towards God. Modern psy- 
chology, for instance, is largely in a physio- 
logical stage yet. As psychological knowl- 
edge increases it will become more and more 
spiritually visioned. Many recent text-books 
on psychological phenomena go limping, for 
the writer has neglected to keep spiritual 
vision clear, or he has failed to see the inti- 
mate relationship of God-consciousness and 
soul-consciousness. The man who does not 
know his Lord intimately and lovingly can 
never be a trusted authority in psychology. 
He must first have been on the mount of 
revelation with the Master. 

There are three or four events in the 
earthly life of Jesus that stand out with royal 
beauty and power. The Transfiguration is 
one of these, and is full of sublime spiritual 
teaching. Only a few T days and then would 
come the cross with all its tragedy and suf- 
fering. And just before the storm of the 
world's hate and passion breaks upon the 
Son of God He stands here surrounded by 
five men — two representing Hrs Church in 
heaven, and three representing His Church 



68 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

on earth ; and lo ! the veil of the mortal is 
parted and they behold His glory. But 
Luke says that He went up into the moun- 
tain to pray. The hour of meditation and 
prayer had become the hour of revelation. 
Meditation and communion always result in 
transfiguration. 

i. Meditation with Jesus on the mount 
reveals the immanence of the spiritual world. 
immanence of So near did it seem to Peter to 
be the ideal of joy that his first 
thought was to stay there. " Let us make 
three tabernacles ; one for Thee, and one for 
Moses, and one for Elijah." Heaven is not 
far from those who tarry on the mount with 
their Lord. 

"Not where the wheeling systems darken, 
And our benumbed conceiving soars; 
The drift of pinions, would we harken, 
Beats at our own clay shuttered doors." 

How beautifully Richard Watson Gilder ex- 
pressed the immanence of the spiritual. He 
was camping with some friends under the 
pine trees, and one summer evening they sat 
talking of the future and what it had in store 



MEDITATION AND REVELATION 69 

for deathless souls when face to face with 
God. That night as the poet lay awake the 
pine branches above him seemed to be whis- 
pering among themselves and saying : 

u Heard'st thou these wanderers dreaming of a time 
When man more near the Eternal One shall 

climb ; 
How like the new-born babe, that cannot tell 
The mother's arm that wraps it warm and well." 

If every God-created sense of this immor- 
tal soul were wide awake, how real would 
become the eternal world, and how near God 
would be ! Then would we realize the truth 
of the poet's words : 

" Closer to me than breathing, 
Nearer than hands and feet." 

Who has not in moments of meditation and 
prayer caught a glimpse of opening gates ? 
Who has not in the secret place of holy com- 
munion felt the rush of some white surging 
wave of emotion — a foretaste of the joy of 
the blessed? Sometimes it is as if some 
angel had touched this frail body and bade 
us look upward. It is in such a moment 



70 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

that the struggling soul is nerved anew for 
the conflict with sin. Were it not that God 
vouchsafes to lead us up into some mount of 
transfiguration now and then many of us 
would become utterly discouraged. Dr. Jo- 
seph Parker once said : " If we do not get 
back to visions, peeps into heaven, con- 
sciousness of the higher glory and the larger 
life, we shall lose our religion ; our altar will 
be a bare stone, unblessed by visitant from 
heaven." 

2. Meditation with Jesus on the mount 
reveals something of the glory of the spirit- 

The Spiritual Ual bod y- Here W6I " e meU wh ° 

Body were once as we are — subject to 

all the weaknesses and diseases of this earthly 
life — yet now clothed in immortal youth. 
The mortal had given way to the immortal; 
the natural to the spiritual. And yet they 
retained their identity. They were still Moses 
and Elijah as truly as when they walked the 
earth. No longer encumbered with the gross 
body of flesh, but the earthly body trans- 
muted into that glorious spiritual organism 
of ethereal mould and immortal beauty. 



MEDITATION AND REVELATION 7 1 

That the spiritual body shall be possessed 
of mighty strength seems evident. We are 
to be "as the angels," and David said, " Oh, 
ye His angels that excel in strength." To 
move from sphere to sphere with the speed 
of thought on His high errands of love and 
mercy and judgment would seem to be at 
least a part of the employment of the glori- 
fied. What must it be to be worthy to be 
entrusted by the King of kings with a mis- 
sion similar to that of Moses and Elijah, or 
of the angel whom John saw in vision, who, 
with one foot on the sea and the other on 
the land, sware by Him that liveth forever 
and ever that time shall be no more. 

Here we are prisoners of the flesh, here 
many of us suffer with pain every waking 
hour, here many go limping all their days, 
here many never know the sweet sense of 
sight or hearing, here many are burdened 
with the frailties of old age, here many suffer 
poverty and are burdened in body and mind. 
But what must it be to be free — eternally, 
gloriously free, and to be messengers of the 
King? What must it be to be one mo- 



72 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

ment in the darkness and distress of great 
physical pain and the next forever beyond 
pain and sorrow, and dwelling in " a house 
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens," 
and worthy to have a part in the high minis- 
tries of the Eternal Throne ! Surely this is a 
change not to be feared, but welcomed when 
our work is done. " Beloved, now are we 
the sons of God and it doth not yet appear 
what we shall be ; but we know that, when 
He shall appear, we shall be like Him ; for 
we shall see Him as He is." 

Meditation with Jesus on the mount gives 
reality to the power and majesty of Christ. 
The Reality of The disciples had seen the glory 
of His humanity. They had been 
reproved by Him, exhorted by Him, encour- 
aged by Him. But as yet they had appar- 
ently little conception of His real glory. The 
reality of the presence of the Son of God 
with them they could not grasp. 

How many there are to whom their Lord 
is a mere phantom ! He has no real person- 
ality. They think of one who lived and died 
nineteen hundred years ago and they revere 



MEDITATION AND REVELATION 73 

His memory. But of a living, present Lord 
and Saviour and Friend they seem to have 
no conception. This is the reason why there 
are so many church-members who are in- 
active in Christian work. To them Christ is 
a name, a memory; not a life, a power. 
There is no impelling influence of holy love 
in their hearts. Look at Savonarola. When 
he had only the form of religion he was con- 
tent to stay in the convent. But when the 
Christ became a reality in his life then con- 
vent walls could not hold him. Florence 
soon heard the thunder tones of his voice, 
and trembled. With Christ we will dare go 
down from the mountain top to battle with 
demons. The reality of His presence and 
power will make heroes of the weakest of us, 
and " one will chase a thousand, and two put 
ten thousand to flight. " 

Here is the world's need to-day — men who 
have seen their Lord. The world can never 
expect much from those to whom Christ is 
a mere name or a vague conception. If the 
Church of this twentieth century would go 
forward with a confidence, born of holy 



74 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

waiting before God, to say to the lost 
multitudes, " We have seen the Lord," noth- 
ing could stay her conquering march. 

Meditation with Jesus on the mount gives 
new faith in the supernatural. Here the 
Faith m the disciples had a glimpse into 

Supernatural - - . t T T 

another kingdom. Here was a 
sample of the heavenly kingdom, and what 
to them seemed unnatural when the Master 
talked about it now seemed perfectly natural 
in the moment of experience. They wanted 
to stay here. These are days when some 
men are trying to eliminate the supernatural 
from the Bible. They seek to explain away 
the miracles of the Old and New Testaments 
and discount all that is superhuman in the 
life of Christ. But such have never dwelt on 
the mount. He who dwells on the mountain 
of meditation with the glorified Lord will 
easily come to see that what is supernatural 
to us may be very natural to those in a little 
higher realm of being. Indeed he will be- 
come conscious of what is called the super- 
natural. For to be on the mount is to be 
in communion with the living Christ, and 



MEDITATION AND REVELATION 75 

thus, as Paul expresses it, " we know Him and 
the power of His resurrection/ ' To really 
know Christ and the power of His resurrec- 
tion means the banishment of all doubt con- 
cerning the supernatural in religion. 



a ipraget 
Almighty God, teach us Thy greatness 
through Thy goodness, lest we be affrighted, 
and become as men in whom there is no 
strength. We would see Thy glory, but our 
eyes could not bear the light ; may we there- 
fore see Thy mercy, and become accustomed 
to the milder glory. Show us that Thy pity 
is great, that Thy love itself is glorious, and 
thus, little by little, as we are able to bear it, 
do Thou continue and complete the revela- 
tion of Thyself in our wondering and grate- 
ful hearts. Thou dost grow upon us like an 
increasing light ; continue so to do until 
there be in us no darkness at all, our whole, 
life beautiful with the presence of Thy glory, 
cleansed and purified by the fire of Thy 
righteousness. 

— -Joseph Parker. 



MEDITATION AND CALVARY 



But far be it from me to glory, save 
in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
through which the world hath been 
crucified unto me, and I unto the 
world. 

—Paul 



VI 

MEDITATION AND CALVARY 

THERE is no dynamic like Calvary. 
There is no magnet like the story of 
the cross. Among all the glorious 
doctrines of the Word of God the atonement 
must ever maintain the primacy. It is the 
master truth of all Scripture. The apostles 
knew no other preaching than the preaching 
of the cross. They had only one theme — 
Christ and Him crucified — about which were 
grouped all other themes. " Be it far from 
me/' said Paul, " to glory, save in the cross 
of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the 
world hath been crucified unto me, and I 
unto the world/ ' 

We live in a day of lessening emphasis 

upon the preaching of the cross of Christ. 

We do not take time to meditate, 

St. Catherine 

as did the fathers, on the passion 
of our Lord, and so we lose our appreciation 
of its infinite meaning. Through neglect of 
Calvary we become afraid of Calvary. We 

79 



80 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

are not willing to see its suffering lest we 
become partakers. Look at St. Catherine. 
She felt such keen distress for lost souls 
about her, that as she turned towards 
Calvary she cried, " Give me Thy promise, 
dear Lord, that Thou wilt save them 1 " Then 
it seemed to her that the Lord grasped her 
hand and gave her the promise ; but as He 
did so she felt a sharp pain as if a nail had 
pierced her palm. In these days of psycho- 
logical wisdom we speak lightly of an ex- 
perience like this, and easily explain it away. 
But this is sure, St. Catherine knew her Lord 
as many of us do not know Him, and she 
shared with Him the passion for lost souls. 
If we would stop to look at Calvary and see 
the suffering Lamb of God we too might 
share His travail of soul for the lost. 

The experience of St. Francis is similar to 

that of St. Catherine, and is familiar to all 

students of so-called mystical lit- 

St. Francis 

erature. For weeks he had been 
recalling the scenes of the crucifixion. He 
had fasted and prayed with the memory of 
Calvary ever before him. Again and again 



MEDITATION AND CALVARY 8 1 

he had read the story of the Passion until the 
love and suffering of the Saviour had burned 
itself into his heart. He had spent the night 
in prayer, when, with the rising sun, there 
came to him a wondrous vision : 

"A seraph w r ith outspread wings flew 
towards him from the edge of the horizon, 
and bathed his soul in raptures unutterable. 
In the centre of the vision appeared a cross, 
and the seraph was nailed upon it. When 
the vision disappeared, he felt sharp suffer- 
ings, mingled with ecstasy in the first mo- 
ments. Stirred to the very depths of his 
being, he was anxiously asking the meaning 
of it all, when he perceived upon his body the 
Stigmata of the Crucified." 

Come with me, ye redeemed by the blood, 

and see now your dying Lord. Come first 

to Gethsemane, where, in His 

A Meditation 

agony, He lies prostrate on the 
cold ground. See Him sweat great drops of 
blood. Hear Him cry, " Father, if Thou be 
willing, remove this cup from Me : neverthe- 
less not My will, but Thine, be done." This 
was the crisis in that titanic struggle with sin 



82 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

and death. From this moment the tide of 
battle surges towards the cross. Now let sin 
and death do their worst. 

See, here they come ! The torches are 
flashing through the trees. His own disciple 
The leads the murderous mob. They 

Arrest surround him with fiendish glee, 

and Judas gives the kiss of betrayal. Then 
they drag Him from the Garden towards the 
city. But we shall never know all that He 
endured on that way of sorrow. Tissot, the 
great painter, represents them, while crossing 
the stone bridge over Kedron, pushing Him 
over the side of the bridge, and He falls pros- 
trate in the bed of the brook below. There 
for a moment He may lave His feverish lips 
in the cooling waters, thus fulfilling an old 
prophecy, " He shall drink of the brook in 
the way." But they drag Him up again, and 
hurry Him on to the city. They take Him 
first to the house of Annas, that greedy old 
Sadducee, who probably had much to do with 
the part Judas played in the tragedy. Mean- 
while the Sanhedrim is being assembled in 
the house of Caiaphas. Thither they hurry 



MEDITATION AND CALVARY 83 

Him, and there the jailer, a poor hireling of 
the high priest, strikes Him in the face. 
What hours of suffering He endures here as 
they wait for daybreak, the mob meanwhile 
amusing themselves by mocking Him and 
spitting upon Him. 

When the dawn has come the ecclesiastical 
trial, a mere fiasco, has ended ; and then be- 
gins the civil trial before Pilate, 

The Sham & ' 

Tnals who happens to be in Jerusalem. 

After that strange private interview Pilate 
pronounces Him innocent. But this only 
adds to the fury of the mob. Then a bright 
thought strikes Pilate. He will send Him to 
Herod of Galilee, for Jesus is a Galilean. 
But the Christ will not speak to this charac- 
terless murderer of John the Baptist, and 
Herod in anger throws a scarlet robe about 
the prisoner and sends Him back to Pilate. 
Then Pilate w r ould try to save Him by putting 
Him side by side with Barabbas, the thug and 
murderer, and saying, " Which will I re- 
lease ? " And they cry, " Barabbas ! " " But 
what shall I do with Jesus ? " And they cry, 
" Crucify Him ! Crucify Him ! " 



84 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

Then Pilate, after washing his hands and 

declaring himself innocent, orders Him 

scourged. He is turned over to 

The Cruel ° 

Mocking the cruel R oman soldiers, to 

whom He is nothing more than " a hunted 
animal for the dogs to worry." Here He 
suffers the vilest indignities. Here they 
make a wreath of thorns and put it on His 
brow. They have heard that He called 
Himself a king, and so they put a reed 
in His hand, and, bowing before Him, 
mock Him. Here all the baser passions 
of these Roman butchers are turned loose, 
and hell itself spits its venom on the Son of 
God. 

Now begins the march to Calvary. He 

faints beneath the heavy cross they put on 

His shoulders, but they hurry 

Calvary 

Him on. Now the hill is reached. 
With rough hands they strip His garments 
and bind Him to the cross. They drive the 
nails through His quivering flesh, and lift 
up the cross before the eyes of the blood- 
thirsty multitude. And there He hangs — 
your dying Lord ! 



MEDITATION AND CALVARY 85 

Hear Him cry, " My God, My God, why 
hast Thou forsaken Me?" Then the dark- 
ness thickens. The sun hides its face. A 
strange silence falls upon the jesting murder- 
ers. The mistiness of death gathers on the 
Saviour's eyes as He cries, " It is finished !" 
From the city yonder is heard the murmur 
of voices, and the sound of trumpets, and in 
the gathering gloom may be seen the column 
of smoke rising from the altar of burnt sac- 
rifice. But, oh, Jerusalem ! the hour of thy 
desolation has come. What avails your sac- 
rifices now ? The glory has departed. Be- 
hold the veil is rent in twain, the earth 
quakes, the rocks are rent, the tombs are 
opened ! Yonder is the sacrifice of heaven 
— the true Lamb of God. A cruel world has 
rejected Him. They have slain their Messiah 
and King. He is the last and only sac- 
rifice for sin. And that blood-stained 
cross with its bleeding victim shall yet be 
the glory of the eternities, and uncounted 
millions shall turn their eyes of faith 
towards Golgotha's hill, and through the 
centuries cry 



86 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness 
My beauty are, my glorious dress ; 
' Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed, 
With joy shall I lift up my head. 

Hail ! Thou suffering Christ ! All hail ! Hail ! 
Thou conquering Christ ! All hail ! The 
darkness of Calvary is past, and the world 
is rejoicing in Thy resurrection power and 
victory. But far be it from me to glory save 
in Thy cross ! 



21 prater 

O Sacred Head, now wounded, 

With grief and shame weighed down, 
Now scornfully surrounded 

With thorns, Thine only crown ; 
O Sacred Head, what glory, 

What bliss, till now was Thine ! 
Yet, though despised and gory, 

I joy to call Thee mine. 

What language shall I borrow 

To thank Thee, dearest Friend, 
For this, Thy dying sorrow, 

Thy pity without end ? 
Oh, make me Thine forever ; 

And should I fainting be, 
Lord, let me never, never, 

Outlive my love to Thee. 



MEDITATION AND CALVARY 87 

Be near me when I'm dying, 

Oh, show Thy cross to me ; 
And, for my succour flying, 

Come, Lord, and set me free ; 
These eyes, new faith receiving, 

From Jesus shall not move ; 
For he who dies believing, 

Dies safely, through Thy love. 

— Bernard of Clairvaux. 



MEDITATION AND THE BIBLE 

But his delight is in the law of the 
Lord, and in His law doth he medi- 
tate day and night. 

— David. 



VII 

MEDITATION AND THE BIBLE 

" f [— "MiE reason we come away so cold 
from reading the Word is because 
we do not warm ourselves at the 
fire of meditation," said Richard Watson. 
The Bible is preeminently a book for medi- 
tation. It can never be rightly understood 
and appreciated until we learn to meditate 
on its great truths. The doors that guard 
its most precious gems will forever remain 
bolted to all but meditative souls. The man 
who has come to delight in the law of the 
Lord is the man who has learned the blessed 
secret of meditating day and night on its 
words. Some people find much of the Bible 
uninteresting and unprofitable because they 
have never discovered the way of prayerful 
meditation. They skim the Scriptures rather 
than search the Scriptures. ,An old writer 
puts it thus : 

91 



92 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

" Amongst the insects which subsist on 
the sweet sap of flowers, there are two 
Bee or vei 7 different classes. One is 

remarkable for its imposing 
plumage, which shows in the sunlight like 
the dust of gems ; and as you watch its 
jaunty gyrations over the fields, and its 
minuet dance from flower to flower, you can- 
not help admiring its graceful activity, for it 
is plainly getting over a great deal of 
ground. But in the same field there is 
another worker, whose brown vest and busi- 
nesslike, straightforward flight may not have 
arrested your eye. His fluttering neighbour 
darts down here and there, and sips ele- 
gantly wherever he can find a drop of ready 
nectar ; but this dingy plodder makes a point 
of alighting everywhere, and wherever he 
alights he either finds honey or makes it. If 
the flower cup be deep, he goes down to the 
bottom ; if its dragon mouth be shut, he 
thrusts its lips asunder ; and if the nectar be 
peculiar or recondite, he explores all about 
till he discovers it, and then having ascer- 
tained the knack of it, joyful as one who has 



MEDITATION AND THE BIBLE 93 

found great spoil, he sings his way down 
into its luscious recesses. His rival, of the 
painted velvet wing, has no patience for such 
dull and long-winded details. But what is 
the end ? Why, the one died last October 
along with the flowers ; the other is warm in 
his hive to-night, amidst the fragrant stores 
which he gathered beneath the bright beams 
of summer." 

It was Leigh Richmond who describes so 
beautifully one of his visits to the Young 
The Young Cottager. He found her asleep 
with her finger on the open 
Bible before her. She was pointing at the 
words, "Lord, remember me when Thou 
comest into Thy kingdom." " Is this casual 
or designed ? thought I. Either way it is re- 
markable. But in another moment I dis- 
covered that her finger was indeed an index 
to the thoughts of her heart. She half 
awoke from her dozing state, but not suffi- 
ciently so to perceive that any person was 
present, and said in a kind of whisper, 
1 Lord, remember me — remember me- — re- 
member — remember a poor child ; Lord, re- 



94 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

member me.' " That is true meditation, 
when we appropriate the Word to our own 
soul need, and make its promises a part of 
the very life. 

One of the great spiritual masters of the 
last century, Dean Goulburn, formulated 
Rules for some rules for Bible study that 

Meditation i_ u i_ t_ 1 r i 

should be helpful to every sin- 
cere student of the Word. " Meditation on 
Scripture," said he, " need not be limited to 
set times, but may be carried on profitably 
in any hour of solitude, and whenever the 
mind is not otherwise engaged. Possibly at 
some interval during the day you may be 
alone. Have recourse then to the passage 
of Scripture which you have previously 
lodged in your mind, and ask yourself seri- 
ously, as in the sight of God, what practical * 
lessons it is designed to teach, and what 
bearing it has on your spiritual welfare. 
. . . During a solitary walk, or at any 
period of leisure, imagine that, when you re- 
turn, you will be called upon to address an 
audience on the subject which you propose 
for meditation. It wonderfully disentangles 



MEDITATION AND THE BIBLE 95 

all difficulties to consider how we could 
make plain to other minds the truth which is 
thus beset to our own. 

" 1. Endeavour to realize the presence of 
God according to that conception of this 
great truth which best suits your own mind. 
Feel that He is here. 

11 2. Call upon God as an essential condi- 
tion of success, to inspire you with holy 
thoughts, and to bless them to your spiritual 
profit and growth in grace for Christ's sake. 
Do it very briefly but with great earnestness. 

11 3. Open the passage of Scripture which 
is to form the subject of meditation ; or re- 
peat it mentally. 

" 4. The Bible being opened at the pas- 
sage, picture to yourself the circumstances 
by an effort of the imagination. 

11 5. The circumstances having been 
pictured, next comes the exercise of the 
understanding upon the words. We reflect 
upon them, turn them over in our mind, 
endeavour to make out what they teach, 
what doctrine is wrapped up in them, and 
what duty. 



96 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

"6. Next follows the exercise of the 
affections and the will, incomparably the 
most important part of the whole medita- 
tion. In this consists the practical applica- 
tion of the little sermon to your own heart, 
in the absence of which it is useless, or in 
some respects worse than useless. It will be 
a good plan to allow any feeling which stirs 
within you, as you regard the truths of the 
passage, to express itself in prayer. Con- 
clude all by an exercise of the will, that is, 
by one or more resolutions." 

But to these very helpful rules may be 
added some other practical suggestions : 

i. Memorize the Scripture. It is a good 

plan to commit at least one verse to memory 

every day. Let this be done 

Memorize 

upon rising in the morning, then 
all through the day let that verse be carried 
in the memory, and from it will flow an ever- 
freshening stream of comfort and strength 
and hope. In after life this memorized 
Scripture will give forth a fragrance that will 
enrich and beautify life's closing years. For 
God's children who toil in the fields, or in 



MEDITATION AND THE BIBLE 97 

the factory, or in the office, or in the mine, 
and who do not have much time to devote 
to systematic Bible study, this is a good 
plan. One verse kept in the memory 
throughout the day may be turned over and 
over again in the mind until every word 
flashes with some beautiful lesson. 

2. Read and reread the great passages of 
the Word. There is a wonderful variety in 
Read the the Bible. There is variety of 

Great Passages .. 1,1 

literary structure and style, va- 
riety in the religious point of view of the 
writers, variety in the individuality of the 
writers, and variety in the spiritual intensity 
of different parts. But this variety does not 
interfere with its real unity. There are parts 
of Scripture however that will appeal with 
more interest and power to some minds than 
to others. Yet there are certain passages 
and chapters of such outstanding beauty and 
power that all spiritual minds are naturally 
attracted to them. In the Old Testament, for 
instance, such passages as Genesis i., Deuter- 
onomy xxxii.-xxxiv., The Song of Deborah, 
The Prayer of Hannah, 2 Samuel xxii., Solo- 



98 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

mon's Prayer of Dedication, Psalms xix., xxiii., 
xlviii., Ixv., lxxii., lxxxiv. and ciii., and Isaiah 
xl.-lxvi. will never lose their freshness. In 
the New Testament The Words of Jesus, 
and such passages as Romans viii., i Cor- 
inthians xiii., and St. Paul's letter to the 
Ephesians, we will want to read again and 
again. 

3. Always seek the aid of the Holy Spirit 
Some one has said that the Bible without the 
The Hoiy Holy Spirit is like a sun-dial by 

moonlight. The Holy Spirit is 
the great Interpreter of Scripture. When, in 
the quiet hour, the mind and heart are open 
to His influence He sheds light divine on the 
sacred page. He uncovers the hidden things 
of truth. He makes plain the ways of God. 
"Howbeit when He, the Spirit of Truth is 
come, He shall guide you into all truth." 

Every hour of meditation therefore should 
begin with prayer for His presence and His 
enlightening influence. When He is present 
there will be no time spent in day dreaming. 
Mind and heart will be wonderfully quick- 
ened, and the deep things of God will be 



MEDITATION AND THE BIBLE 99 

uncovered and appropriated to enrich and 
glorify the life. 



a prater 

Come Holy Ghost, our hearts inspire, 

Let us Thine influence prove ; 
Source of the old prophetic fire, 

Fountain of life and love. 

Come Holy Ghost, for moved by Thee 
The prophets wrote and spoke ; 

Unlock the truth, Thyself the key, 
Unseal the sacred book. 

Expand Thy wings celestial Dove, 

Brood o'er our nature's night; 
On our disordered spirits move, 

And let there now be light. 

God, through Himself, we then shall know, 

If Thou within us shine ; 
And sound, with all Thy saints below, 

The depths of love divine. 

— Charles Wesley. 



MEDITATION AND 
PREACHING 



My heart was hot within me ; 
While I was musing the fire kindled : 
Then spake I with my tongue. 

— David. 



VIII 
MEDITATION AND PREACHING 

IT is said of the great and good McCheyne 
that on Saturday afternoon he was on 
his way to visit a dying man when he 
was met by a friend who asked how he could 
spare time on Saturday for such a purpose. 
The preacher replied, " I always like before 
preaching to take a look over the brink." 
In the minister's preparation for the pulpit 
nothing else can take the place of the look 
into the unseen. No brilliancy of mind or 
natural fervour, no social gift or popularity 
can permit the preacher to dispense with 
spiritual contemplation. 

We need a revival of the mystical in the 

Christian ministry to-day. We have swung 

altogether to ° * ar towards the 

A Revival of & 

the Mystical op p OS ite extreme. And when I 
say mystical I mean it in the best sense of 
that very expressive word. Dr. Rufus Jones 
has given us an excellent definition of gen- 
uine mystical religion : 

103 



104 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

"It is not a thing of ecstatic momentary 
states, and it is not a blinding of the eyes in 
the hope of discovering another organ to see 
with. It is a life of normal, joyous corre- 
spondence with the presence of God, who 
streams into every person whose inner win- 
dows are open, and who floods every act and 
impulse with constructive energy." 

We have become so practical and so intel- 
lectual in these latter days that we seem al- 
most tempted to get along without God. We 
seem to have lost our consciousness of the 
unseen and eternal, and thus have lost spir- 
itual depth. Said the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, " We have high churchmen, and low 
churchmen, and broad churchmen ; what we 
need is deep churchmen." 

For the successful minister spiritual medita- 
tion is necessary. 

I. In order to settled conviction concern- 
ing the great truths of God. How can any 
man preach the great doctrines 

Priests of r ° 

Truth of the Bible with power unless he 

have a profound conviction of their truth? 
He must feel that these great teachings have 



MEDITATION AND PREACHING 105 

become a part of his very life. It was Johann 
Gottlieb Fichte, the prophet of transcendental 
idealism, and a man of stainless character who 
said, " I am a priest of truth. My life, my for- 
tunes are of little moment — the results of my 
life are of infinite moment. I have bound 
myself to venture all things, to suffer all 
things for truth." And this must be the 
gospel preacher's ideal concerning his holy 
vocation. He is spriest of truth in the high- 
est sense. 

Neglect of spiritual meditation will always 
be noticeable in the minister. His grasp of 
truth will be uncertain, and his preaching 
will produce uncertainty and vacillation in 
his hearers. There will be little soul food 
in what he says. Some modern preaching 
is much like the dish of which Abraham 
Lincoln speaks as " homeopathic soup made 
from the shadow of a chicken." It lacks 
food elements. It does not satisfy spiritual 
hunger. Prayerful meditation upon the 
great themes of the Word of God will 
deepen and fasten the hold of truth on the 
mind and heart, and produce in the preach- 



106 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

er's life such earnestness of conviction con- 
cerning the Scriptures that he will not ques- 
tion their inspiration. Then his message will 
have authority. It will be " in demonstration 
of the spirit and of power/ ' It will be a 
message from God, and the people will know 
that it is. 

If the truth were known it would easily be 
seen that many ministers who are preaching 
what is called " liberalism " and " new the- 
ology " to-day are men who neglected to 
keep in touch with God through meditation 
and private devotion. An eminent professor 
in one of our theological schools says that 
when he finds a young minister who has 
fallen into doubt, investigation always re- 
veals the fact that the young man neglected 
secret prayer and meditation on the great 
truths of the Bible. Nothing will so quickly 
take the keen edge off a man's own religious 
experience, and undermine his faith in the 
inerrancy of holy Scripture like neglect of 
spiritual meditation. 

2. In order to patience concerning the vis- 
ible results of our work. When we look from 



MEDITATION AND PREACHING 107 

a mere human standpoint we shall find 

plenty of opportunity for discouragement in 

pastoral and pulpit work. To 

Patience 

some of us it is given only to 
sow without ever seeing the harvest in this 
life. What need of patience and complete 
submission to the will of God ! Listen to 
Milton who, when stricken with blindness 
and poverty, wrote : 

When I consider how my light is spent, 

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, 

And that one talent, which is death to hide, 

Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent 

To serve therewith my Maker, and present 

My true account, lest He, returning, chide ; 

" Doth God exact day-labour, light denied ? " 

I fondly ask : but Patience, to prevent 

That murmur, soon replies, " God doth not need 

Either man's work, or His own gifts ; who best 

Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best ; His state 

Is kingly : thousands at His bidding speed, 

And post o'er land and water without rest ; 

They also serve who only stand and wait." 

He who is much in the secret place of com- 
munion and meditation will develop the 
grace of patience and hopefulness, and if 
faithfully doing his duty as heaven's ambas- 



108 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

sador will be content to leave results with 
God. 

3. In order to preparation for the deliv- 
ery of the message. A great naturalist of 
Deliver of ^ e eighteenth century has sug- 

thVSage gested Qne q{ the secrets of 

powerful and successful preaching. He says : 
"Invention depends on patience. Contem- 
plate your subject long; it will gradually 
unfold, till a sort of electric spark convulses 
for a moment the brain, and spreads down 
to the very heart a glow of irritation. Then 
come the luxuries of genius, the true hours 
for production and composition ; hours so 
delightful that I have spent twelve and four- 
teen successively at my writing desk and 
have still been in a state of pleasure." The 
mental preparation is always necessary. The 
thought must take fire before the words take 
fire. But if there be mental preparation only, 
the message will not be what it should be. 
We must come from a vision of the heavenly 
if we would be true messengers of God. 

We are threatened to-day with a spirit of 
professionalism in the pulpit ; and apostolic 



MEDITATION AND PREACHING 109 

ideals have been all but lost sight of by many 
who assume the sacred office of the Chris- 
tian ministry. It was the great Apostle to 
the Gentiles who said, "But far be it from 
me to glory, save in the cross of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, through which the world hath 
been crucified unto me, and I unto the world." 
He who would maintain an ideal like this 
must be much alone with God. He must 
see something of the relative value of the 
earthly and the heavenly, and he must see 
something of the real glory of the cross of 
Christ. When he has meditated on the sac- 
rificial death of his Lord until his heart is 
aflame with love then his words will be as 
fire whenever and wherever he speaks. 

That is a beautiful legend of the Feast of 
St. Francis of Assisi and St. Clara in the 
vision of Church of St. Mary and the 

St. Francis A t mm m - , _ 

Angels. "And at the first 
dish," runs the legend, " St. Francis began to 
speak of God so sweetly, so sublimely, so 
wondrously, that the fullness of divine grace 
came down on them, and they were rapt in 
God. And as they were thus rapt, with eyes 



IIO THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

and hands uplift to heaven, the folk of Assisi 
and the country round about saw that St. 
Mary and the Angels, and all the house, and 
the wood that was hard by the house, were 
burning brightly, and it seemed as if it were 
a great fire that filled the church and the 
house and the whole wood together. For 
which cause the people of Assisi ran thither 
in great haste to quench the flames — but 
coming close up to the house, and finding 
no fire at all, they entered within and found 
St. Francis and St. Clara and all their com- 
pany in contemplation rapt in God and 
sitting around that humble board. Whereby 
of a truth they understood that this had been 
a heavenly flame, and no earthly one at all." 
Neglect of meditation upon the great 
verities of Scripture will mean a shallow 
intellectualism or a lazy formalism for the 
preacher. There will be no blood-red 
earnestness in his manner ; there will be no 
flame in his words. He will have no heart 
grip on his congregation because he has not 
waited in meditation and prayer until the 
truth he preaches has gripped his own soul. 



MEDITATION AND PREACHING III 

4. hi order to a right conception of the 
glory of his high calling. What a high ideal 
His High *-he Apostle Paul had for the call- 

ing and work of the ministry ! 
He speaks of " the mystery of the Gospel for 
which I am an ambassador in chains." He 
exhorts Timothy to be a " good minister of 
Jesus Christ, nourished in the words of the 
faith," and charges him "in the sight of God, 
who quickeneth all things, and of Christ 
Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed 
the good confession ; that thou keep the 
commandment, without spot, without re- 
proach, until the appearing of our Lord 
Jesus Christ." 

" Suffer hardships," he says again, " with 
me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus," and 
11 preach the word ; be instant in season, out 
of season ; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all 
long-suffering and teaching." Is it likely 
that we ever would have had such words as 
these had not Paul been turned aside from 
his ceaseless travels into a Roman dungeon ? 
There he had time to pen these immortal 
letters that have in them such richness of 



112 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

thought and experience, and that bear so 
plainly the marks of the hours spent in holy 
meditation. 

Through the multiplicity of organizations 
and departments in modern church work it 
Temptation to is to be feared that the pulpit is 

Serve Tables - . . , . , T 

tast becoming secularized. In 
some communities the minister is no longer 
a preacher. He is the business manager for 
the various departments of church activity. 
In other communities he is the ecclesiastical 
administrator, or the social leader. There is 
a constant temptation in these days for the 
minister to " forsake the Word of God and 
serve tables." In many churches a man is 
valued more for his administrative ability 
than for his power to preach the Gospel or 
teach the Word of God. Such a man must 
find the secret place, and meditate on those 
things that led him to enter this holy office, 
and then ask himself whether he is really 
doing the work to which the Holy Spirit 
called him. 

The minister who finds time for contempla- 
tion of the great verities and awful sublimities 



MEDITATION AND PREACHING 113 

of time and eternity, as set forth in the 
Scriptures, will quickly come to a high con- 
ception of his mission as an ambassador of 
the King of kings. He will see that his 
great work is to preach the Gospel. Such a 
man will have no time for mere intellectual 
gymnastics in the pulpit. He will seek to be 
a great preacher, but a great preacher after 
the apostolic ideal. And the consciousness 
of the greatness of his calling will give to 
his messages a tone of heavenly authority 
that has been made sweet and tender by 
hours of waiting in the inner chamber with 
his Lord. 

5. /;/ order to be saved from the sin of liv- 
ing a selfish life. The conditions of modern 
church life are often such as to 

Saved From 

semshness expose the minister to this subtle 

temptation. The tendency towards profes- 
sionalism makes it easy for the man who is 
much before the public to drift into self-liv- 
ing. To be sure only the grace of God can 
cleanse us from selfishness, but we must be 
conscious of our need, we must, see ourselves 
as God sees us before we will seek this cleans- 



114 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

ing. What a beautiful example of the un- 
selfish spirit we have in Barnabas. He had 
been sent as a delegate from the church 
at Jerusalem to the church at Antioch. 
But he soon decided that Paul was the 
man for the situation there, and accord- 
ingly went to Tarsus and found Paul and 
brought him to Antioch. He was more anx- 
ious for the success of the church at Antioch 
and for the coming of the kingdom of Christ 
than for his own position or popularity ; so 
he surrendered the leadership to another 
whom he believed to be better fitted for the 
place. What a beautiful spirit of magna- 
nimity ! How much we need it in the Chris- 
tian ministry to-day ! If we could have more 
time to meditate on the unselfishness of Christ 
we would oftener " show forth the Gospel of 
the Son of God," and would be more effective 
in the " greatest work in the world." A few 
words left us by St. Francis reveal the secret 
of his marvellous influence, and might well 
be pondered by us upon whom is the call of 
heaven to preach the everlasting Gospel : 
11 Above all the gifts and the graces which 



MEDITATION AND PREACHING 115 

the Holy Spirit gives to His friends is the 
grace to conquer oneself, and willingly to suf- 
fer pain, outrages, disgrace, and evil treat- 
ment for the love of Christ." 



H prater 
Oh, Lord, save me from praying with a 
cold heart, and from witnessing for Thee in 
cold blood ! I am the child of Thy covenant, 
I am the ransomed of the Lord, I am the 
purchase of Calvary ; and shall I live with a 
cold heart, and speak w T ith a cold heart, and 
witness with careless words ? Send me, oh, 
Lord, to the inner chamber of meditation 
where Thy Spirit can warm my heart and 
teach me the way of true prayer. Help me 
to live the sacrificial life, and so " fill up that 
which is behind of the afflictions of Christ." 
My prayer too often has been so cold and 
heartless, and my life so selfish, and my words 
so professional that I have shamed Thee 
again and again. In bitterness of soul do I 
repent of my sin and plead for Thy mercy. 
Show me Thy favour, oh, God, and teach me 
the way of holy fellowship and soul inter- 
cession. 



MEDITATION AND WORSHIP 

Within my heart is the Eternal 
Adoration. 

— Tersteegen, 



IX 
MEDITATION AND WORSHIP 

EVERY age has its own peculiar needs, 
and these are always apparent when 
conditions are carefully studied. The 
day of Francis of Assisi was characterized by 
papal absolutism and dense superstition, and 
the great need of that time was an inspiration 
that would result in intellectual quickening 
and independence of thought. The age that 
preceded the time of the Wesleys was one of 
intellectual doubt and spiritual deadness. 
It preceded the birth of industrialism and a 
new political and social consciousness. Had 
not the Wesleyan revival come England 
would doubtless have been plunged into a 
civil maelstrom similar to that of the French 
Revolution. An eminent student of history 
declares that Wesley did more to save Eng- 
land than Chatham. 

This age has its peculiar needs. Dr. Adam 

Smith says : " Ours is an age so charged with 

119 



120 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

the instinct of work, so empty of God, of rev- 
erence and of prayer." The tendency has 
been towards the grossest materialism result- 
ing in an indifference to the great problems 
of life and destiny. Dr. Campbell Morgan 
recently said that the attitude of the world to- 
day could be summed up in one word, " in- 
difference." Because of this spirit of indiffer- 
ence the supernatural has become a bugbear 
to many. Criticism of the Word of God and 
the Church has been rampant. Many have 
the form of godliness without the power. We 
need a new spiritual consciousness — a new 
touch of the Divine — a God consciousness. 
Only this can stay the flood-tide of scepticism 
and materialism and irreverence already all 
about us. 

See how little of the spirit of true worship* 
there is in many churches. It would seem 
„ w . , as if the desire for musical enter- 

So Little 

Real worship tainment> or f or intellectual gym- 
nastics had almost entirely superseded the 
desire for real spiritual worship. Suppose 
that in the average congregation the ques- 
tion, " Why are you at church ? " were asked 



MEDITATION AND WORSHIP 121 

each person, and each should answer hon- 
estly, what would be the result ? Some, 
doubtless, would be there to hear a good 
sermon, others to hear the music, others 
from a sense of duty, others to meet friends, 
and yet others from habit. But how few 
might be found there because of a sincere , 
desire to worship God. Is not this the 
reason why there is so little of the presence 
and power of the Holy Spirit in many of 
our church services ? And may not this 
condition be traced directly to the fact that 
we give so little thought to, and make so 
little preparation for, the hour of worship ? • 
Do w r e go to church to meet God ? Do we 
expect to hear His message ? Have we 
given time to heart preparation for the re- 
ception of God's message ? How different 
w r ould be the spirit in which many of us 
enter the place of holy worship if we really 
expected to be face to face with our Lord ! 
An incident in the life of the late Dr. A. J. 
Gordon of the Clarendon Street Baptist 
Church, Boston, transformed' his ministry 
and made his church a great centre of spir- 



122 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

itual power. It can be told best in Dr. Gor- 
don's own words : 

" It was Saturday night, when wearied with 
the work of preparing Sunday's sermon, 
_ „ , that I fell asleep and the dream 

Dr. Gordon s x 

Dream came. I was in the pulpit before 

a full congregation, just ready to begin my 
sermon, when a stranger entered and passed 
slowly up the left aisle of the church looking 
first to the one side and then to the other 
as though silently asking with his eyes that 
some one would give him a seat. He had 
proceeded nearly half-way up the aisle when 
a gentleman stepped out and offered him a 
place in his pew, which was quietly accepted. 
Excepting the face and features of the 
stranger everything in the scene is distinctly 
remembered — the number of the pew, the 
Christian man who offered its hospitality, 
the exact seat which was occupied. Only 
the countenance of the visitor could never 
be recalled. That his face wore a peculiarly 
serious look, as of one who had known some 
great sorrow, is clearly impressed on my 
mind. His bearing too was exceeding hum- 



MEDITATION AND WORSHIP 1 23 

ble, his dress poor and plain, and from the 
beginning to the end of the service he gave 
the most respectful attention to the preacher. 
Immediately as I began my sermon my at- 
tention became riveted on this hearer. If I 
would avert my eyes from him for a moment 
they would instinctively return to him, so 
that he held my attention rather than I held 
his till the discourse was ended. 

11 To myself I said constantly, ■ Who can 
that stranger be ? ' and then I mentally re- 
solved to find out by going to him and mak- 
ing his acquaintance as soon as the service 
should be over. But after the benediction 
had been given the departing congregation 
filled into the aisles and before I could reach 
him the visitor had left the house. The 
gentleman with whom he had sat remained 
behind, however ; and approaching him with 
great eagerness I asked : ' Can you tell me 
who that stranger was who sat in your pew 
this morning ?' In the most matter-of- 
course way he replied : ■ Why, do you not 
know that man ? It was Jesus of Nazareth.' 
With a sense of the keenest disappointment 



124 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

I said : ■ My dear sir, why did you let Him 
go without introducing me to Him ? I was 
so desirous to speak with Him/ And with 
the same nonchalant air the gentleman re- 
plied : ■ Oh, do not be troubled. He has 
been here to-day, and no doubt He will 
come again.' " 

Jesus of Nazareth is present in every place 
where His people are gathered for worship. 
" Lo, I am with you alway." But do we ex- 
pect to meet Him ? And do we always rec- 
ognize Him ? Is not this one of the most 
cruel sins of the age — our failure to recog- 
nize the Lord in His Holy Place? And is 
not this failure often the direct result of so lit- 
tle meditation preceding the hour of worship ? 

There are three things peculiar to this age 
that supplant meditation, and thus hinder 
the preparation for holy worship. 

I. Non-religions reading. The Sunday 
morning newspaper has become an enor- 
M . '. . mous factor in the life of the 

Non-Religious 

Reading American people, and is one of 

the greatest hindrances to holy worship that 
can be named. Its pages are often reeking 



MEDITATION AND WORSHIP 1 25 

with every form of social corruption and 
nonsense, easily destroying the soul's appe- 
tite for spiritual food. The man who spends 
his Sunday mornings wallowing in the filth 
of the criminal, social, and sporting columns 
of the average Sunday newspaper will have 
no time or disposition to prepare himself by 
meditation for the hour of worship. And if 
he does attend the house of God he will 
likely have little appreciation of that which 
is spiritual and soul strengthening in the 
service. 

In the cheap story magazine may be 
found, too, the husks upon which many 
young people are feeding their minds during 
the hours of the Lord's day. The vicious 
suggestions and inane plots and stories to be 
found in much of the cheap magazine litera- 
ture that is being sown broadcast over the 
land is anything but helpful to thoughtful- 
ness and prayer. Parents who allow their 
children to feed on this kind of mental food 
will almost surely find them growing up with 
little desire for the place of worship and little 
appreciation of the spiritual life. 



126 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

2. Criticism of the 7ninistry and the mes- 
sage. In too many homes to-day parents 
fall into the habit of criticizing 

Unkind Criticism 

the preacher and the sermon. 
On the way from the place of worship and 
around the dinner table children and young 
people sometimes hear unkind references to 
the sermon and to the messenger of heaven. 
We forget that God is jealous for the men 
whom He calls and anoints to be His am- 
bassadors and bear His message to a lost 
world. Once upon a time when a woman 
criticized God's servant, Moses, she was 
stricken with the deadly leprosy, and the 
story of Miriam has stood through the ages 
as a warning to all who would touch God's 
anointed or do His prophets harm. There is 
no surer way of destroying the influence of 
the gospel message than by this method of 
criticism, and there is no surer way of mak- 
ing certain that little time will be spent in 
preparation for the hour of worship. Let the 
atmosphere of unkind criticism of ministers 
and churches pervade the home circle, then 
children and young people will soon lose 



MEDITATION AND WORSHIP 12 7 

their respect for the house of God, and there 
will be no disposition to spend the hours of 
the Sabbath morning in thinking and read- 
ing upon sacred themes. Only he who rev- 
erences the house of God and respects the 
Christian ministry will have time for medita- 
tion and prayer in preparation for public 
worship. 

3. The insatiable desire for riches. This 
is fast becoming the national sin, and more, 
The Desire perhaps, than any one thing that 

for Riches - , . - . . t t 

can be mentioned is responsible 
for the small church attendance in many 
communities, and for the little interest shown 
by many professing Christians in the services 
of the sanctuary. When the people of any 
nation set themselves to seek the things of 
this world they soon lose interest in Christ 
and in the coming of His kingdom. Among 
the best things that Ian Maclaren ever said 
were these words: " About one thing only 
we ought to be anxious, and that is the rela- 
tion between the people and Christ. If they 
should cease to believe in Christ, their homes 
and gardens and schools and plenty would 



128 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

avail them little, for the kingdom of the 
people would only end in a secular paradise, 
and the soul of the nation would die. It 
were better for the nation to be ill-fed and 
ill-clothed, better to have no share in gov- 
ernment, and only the poorest means of edu- 
cation, than to lose the inspiration of faith, 
and the hope of a world to come. What 
lends glory to this earth is the arch of heaven 
above us, and the sun which gives its colour 
to the tiniest flower ; and what lends dignity 
to life is the sense of eternity, and the fellow- 
ship of man with God." 

Our Lord and Master knew well the result 
of setting the heart upon earthly things, and 
declared that it was easier for a camel to go 
through the eye of a needle than for a man 
who sets his heart upon riches to enter the 
kingdom of heaven. He whose idol is riches 
is more likely to have his mind upon his 
business plans on the morning of the Lord's 
Day than upon the things that fit the mind 
and heart for holy worship. Meditation upon 
sacred things will have little place in the life 
of the worldling. 



MEDITATION AND WORSHIP 1 29 

How blessed to come to the sanctuary with 
the heart and mind prepared for communion 
with the Highest ! Then every song will be 
an act of worship, and every prayer will 
throb with life, and every sermon will be to 
us the message of God. Then every place 
of worship will be a place where we meet 
God face to face, and the humblest church 
edifice will contain the Shekinah of heaven. 
Then Bishop Bickersteth's lovely hymn will 
have a new meaning for us : 



Come ye yourselves apart and rest a while, 
Weary, I know it of the press and throng, 

Wipe from your brow the sweat and dust of toil, 
And in My quiet strength again be strong. 

Come ye aside from all the world holds dear, 
For converse which the world has never known, 

Alone with Me, and with My Father here, 
With Me and with My Father not alone. 

Come, tell me all that ye have said and done, 
Your victories and failures, hopes and fears. 

I know how hardly souls are wooed and won : 
My choicest wreaths are always wet with tears, 



130 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

Come ye and rest : the journey is too great, 
And ye will faint beside the way and sink : 

The bread of life is here for you to eat, 
And here for you the wine of love to drink. 

Then fresh from converse with your Lord return, 
And work till daylight softens into even : 

The brief hours are not lost in which ye learn 
More of your Master and His rest in heaven. 



MEDITATION AND 
RESERVE POWER 



In quietness and in confidence shall 
be your strength. 

— Isaiah* 



X 

MEDITATION AND RESERVE POWER 

ENTHUSIASM is one thing; mere 
noise quite another. Real enthusi- 
asm is the fruitage of strength of 
life ; mere noise may be an indication of 
weakness. John Wesley was wise enough 
to distinguish between the two, and exhorted 
his preachers to beware of screaming. Wes- 
ley knew very well that the secret of power 
was in that holy waiting before God which 
begets strength through confidence. 

Now there can be no real enthusiasm in 
life where there is not always a good supply 
a Good °* reserve power. So many live \ 

" from hand to mouth " in mental 
and spiritual things. This was surely not 
the plan of our heavenly Father. See with 
what prodigality He has endowed this 
physical body of ours. It is a well-known 
fact, for instance, that the bones of the 
human body have a much greater resisting 
power than is needed under ordinary circum- 

l 33 



134 THE L0ST ART OF MEDITATION 

stances, and that while we have two lungs 
we can get along very comfortably with one, 
or if we lose five-sixths of the thyroid gland 
we can get along very nicely with what re- 
mains. And is there not here a suggestion 
that He who created the human body has 
provided just as lavish mental and spiritual 
equipment, and that these reserve possibilities 
should be nourished and developed just as 
carefully as our physical powers ? 

The man who gives attention to the de- 
velopment of his reserves will have a great 
a Great advantage in life both from the 

standpoint of efficiency and en- 
joyment. Sir Joshua Reynolds said, "A 
picture must not only be done well, but it 
must seem to have been done easily." To 
have power with men we must give the im- 
pression of sufficiency, and we cannot give 
this impression unless we have the reality. 
And the reality can only be found by the 
development of our reserve powers through 
meditation and study and prayer. 

The temptation of modern life is to pay 
little attention to this matter, but to use up 



MEDITATION AND RESERVE POWER 135 

all the power we have in the daily rush of 
business or pleasure. " America's greatest 
need," said a certain European writer, " is 
repose, time to stop and take breath." Un- ' 
less the people of this nation pause in their 
mad hurry towards wealth and social enjoy- 
ment, and give more attention to the de- 
velopment of the inner life the fountains of 
national vigour and success will soon run dry. 
New reserve power means courage. 
There never was a day in the history of the 
Means race w h en men have needed 

more than now a militant cour- 
age. There is in this day a dearth of great 
spiritual leaders — men who will dare to stand 
for the right, and whom God can trust in the 
crisis. Moses developed reserve power in 
the wilds of Horeb, and he became mighty 
in leadership and courageous in the face of 
great difficulties. David developed reserve 
power watching the flocks in the quiet of 
Judea's hills, and his name shall endure 
while the world lasts. And looking at our 
Lord and Master from the standpoint of His 
human nature shall we not say that during 



136 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

these years of quiet in Nazareth, while He 
"advanced in wisdom and stature and in 
favour with God and men," He was laying 
up a supply of reserve force that should 
carry Him through the hardships and 
struggles of His active earthly ministry ? In 
the face of the severest temptations, and in 
the face of desertion and betrayal by friends 
His courage never failed. And there is a 
great call to-day for men of unwavering 
courage who will take their stand in every 
realm of human activity and scorn to com- 
promise with wrong, men of high moral con- 
viction and kingliness of soul whose cour- 
age will not falter. Such men must come 
from the secret place of communion and 
meditation where exhaustless supplies of 
reserve power have been generated and 
stored in the life. 

If we would develop reserve power we 
must first be cleansed from the defilement of 
cleansed s * n - Sin weakens and paralyzes 

from Sin , . . - 

every high purpose and every 
noble ambition. When foul thoughts fill the 
heart and evil passions sway the life there 



MEDITATION AND RESERVE POWER 137 

can be no true development of life's reserves. 
We must be able to say sincerely 

"Make my breast 
Transparent as pure crystal, that the world, 
Jealous of me, may see the foulest thought 
My heart does hold." 

To be a reservoir of power the life must be 
cleansed from that which destroys power. 
Just so long as an unconfessed and unfor- 
given sin remains in the heart there can be 
no consciousness of spiritual power. In the 
quiet hour the Spirit of God will uncover 
every hidden sin, and every secret thought, 
and show us our need for cleansing. The 
earnest soul will always welcome such light 
and fly at once to Him whose blood 
" cleanseth from all sin." 

To develop reserve power we must have 
a definite purpose in life. The shilly-shal- 
a Definite ty> pleasure-loving, amusement- 

seeking existence with which 
some people seem content will never develop 
any reserve force. How few young people 
in these days have any high aim in life. Go 



138 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

into any high school or college and call for 
those who have definitely decided upon some 
great life purpose, and see how few will 
respond. The majority of young people in 
the average community are like driftwood in 
the river's current. They have really given 
little thought to the matter of definiteness of 
aim in life. And from this class, in future 
years, shall come the men and women who 
will fill our jails and penitentiaries and 
pauper houses and lunatic asylums, They 
allow themselves to drift until life loses its 
halo and there is nothing but the black 
stormy sea of remorse and despair before 
them. Pitiable indeed is the condition of the 
life that has been lived with no high purpose, 
and terrible the ruin that often follows. 

The man without a purpose is the man 
only partly alive. There are heaven-born 
gifts and faculties in his nature of which he 
has never been conscious and which are 
dying through neglect. Somebody once 
painted a picture of the resurrection in which 
he tried to represent the work as only half 
done. Of course it was a freak picture. 



MEDITATION AND RESERVE POWER 139 

Some were alive to their waists, some had 
one arm alive, some were represented with 
half of the head alive. But that picture is 
quite possible in human life. There are 
many who for want of a high purpose are 
only partly alive. They have not given time 
to thought concerning any great work, and 
have no consciousness of the sublime pos- 
sibilities wrapped up in their lives. 

To develop reserve power we must often 
be quiet. How richly expressive of soul 
m „ . quiet is that second verse of the 

Be Quiet n 

twenty-third psalm : " He maketh 
me to lie down in green pastures ; He leadeth 
me beside the still waters. He restoreth my 
soul. ,, The distraction and worry of this 
strenuous age kill more people than any 
disease that can be named. Some very 
eminent medical men declare that the alarm- 
ing increase in insanity in recent years may 
be traced directly to the strenuousness of 
modern life. Moments of quiet thought re- 
fresh and renew mind and heart. An hour 
of meditation in the presence chamber of God 
will always restore soul poise and give new 



140 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

strength. The crowded, feverish days of 
business and social activity quickly use up 
the soul's vital forces, but the season of quiet 
thought and communion with heaven not 
only quickly restores spiritual vitality but 
enables us to lay up a reserve supply against 
the days to come. 

Finally, to develop reserve power we must 
think much on the power and boundless 
His power grace of God. " In Him we live 
and move and have our being." 
Jesus said, " All authority hath been given 
unto Me in heaven and on earth. Go ye 
therefore. . . ." He said too, " If ye 
abide in Me and My words abide in you, ask 
whatsoever ye will and it shall be done unto 
you." He who is the source of all power 
and authority has promised to bestow all 
needed power and grace upon us. "Ye 
shall receive power when the Holy Spirit is 
come upon you." Paul became a partaker 
of this divine power and he exclaimed, " I 
can do all things in Him that strengtheneth 
me." When our thought dwells on the 
boundless power and mercy of God faith 



MEDITATION AND RESERVE POWER 141 

will be strengthened to appropriate power. 
We shall not only see our barrenness and 
need, but we shall see our high privilege in 
Christ and shall seek the infilling of the 
Holy Spirit, God's promised Gift. And he 
who has received the Holy Spirit has found 
a never failing source of strength and grace 
and wisdom. 



B praget 
Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, 

Forgive our feverish ways ! 
Re-clothe us in our rightful mind ; 
In purer lives Thy service find, 

In deeper reverence, praise. 

Drop Thy still dews of quietness, 

Till all our strivings cease ; 
Take from our souls the strain and stress, 
And let our ordered lives confess 

The beauty of Thy peace. 

Breathe through the heats of our desire 

Thy coolness and Thy balm ; 
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire : 
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, 

Oh, still small voice of calm ! 

—John G. Whittier. 



MEDITATION AND 
SOUL WINNING 



Now then we are ambassadors for 
Christ, as though God did beseech 
you by us : we pray you in Christ's 
stead, be ye reconciled to God. 

— Paul 



XI 

MEDITATION AND SOUL WINNING 

IT was George Whitfield who said, " When 
I wake I am planning to save souls. 
When I sleep I am dreaming of saving 
souls and my whole heart's desire is to save 
souls." The true Christian's great business 
is to save souls. Whether he be in the 
pulpit or in the pew he should be a soul 
winner. Of course it is the gospel minister's 
great business. Professor Phelps used to 
say that the man who had lost interest in 
men was fit only for a seminary. Somebody 
has suggested that he might have said with 
perhaps more truth, " is fit only for a ceme- 
tery." But our Lord did not intend that the 
work of soul saving should be confined to 
the ministry. He insisted that every Chris- 
tian should be His witness. "Ye shall be 
witnesses unto Me " He said to the early 
Church ; and if there had been found in the 

i45 



146 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

early Church a man or woman who was not 
doing something to win others to Christ the 
sincerity of that Christian's experience would 
have been seriously doubted. 

But the best way to learn the art of soul 
winning is not from books on soul winning, 
Not from nor fr° m lectures on that sub- 

ject, although these may be very 
helpful. Isaac Walton has a suggestion that 
is applicable here. He says : 

" Now for the art of catching fish, that is 
to say, how to make a man — that was not — 
to be an angler by a book ; he that under- 
takes it shall undertake a harder task than 
Mr. Hales, a most valiant and excellent 
fencer, who in the printed book called ' A 
Private School of Defense* undertook to 
teach that art or science, and was laughed at 
for his labour — not that many useful things 
might be learned by that book, but he was 
laughed at because that art was not to be 
taught by words/ ' 

And you cannot learn soul winning by 
words. One may get many helpful sugges- 
tions from books and lectures, but until a 



MEDITATION AND SOUL WINNING 147 

man has trodden the quiet way of medita- 
tion he can never be a very successful soul 
winner. In the quiet of that way he must 
let the Holy Spirit be his teacher. 

We must meditate upon the authority of 
our commission. The King of kings has 
0ur sent us, and He has said, " He 

that receiveth you receiveth 
Me." When we invite men and women to 
be reconciled to God we do it in the name of 
Christ and as His ambassadors, and this is 
true of all Christian workers whether they be 
ministers or laymen. How this note of di- 
vine authority would transform much mod- 
ern preaching. How little of the conscious- 
ness of heavenly ambassadorship there is in 
some pulpits. Shortly before his death, 
Joseph Parker, the great London preacher, 
said: "We have lost the royal element in 
our preaching ; we are now making apolo- 
gies, we are now asking permissions, we are 
now requesting to be allowed that Christ 
should be heard along with teachers vener- 
able by their antiquity and dignified by 
the general pureness of their tone. The 



148 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

preacher now has no kingdom to set up, but 
some little apology to offer. Now the cry is 
not ' Lift up your heads, oh, ye gates, and 
be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the 
king of glory shall come in/ — it is some 
weaker cry, some paltry tone of excuse, or 
some dainty endeavour to escape the 
tragedy of the occasion. Christianity is 
nothing if not a kingdom." 

In the quiet hour of prayerful waiting be- 
fore God we are girded with the strength of 
authority to speak the message of the High- 
est. Then we shall no more apologize for 
our mission, but go forth with the conscious- 
ness that we are heralds of the King of 
Glory. 

We must meditate upon the worth of a 
soul until we come to see something of its 
The worth infinite value. The materialistic 
drift of modern life has lessened 
the emphasis upon the value of the soul. 
The tendency has been to emphasize the 
things of time and sense, and preach what is 
called the " gospel of success " instead of the 
gospel of salvation by the blood of Christ, 



MEDITATION AND SOUL WINNING 149 

And so it has come to pass that some minis- 
ters and some Sunday-school workers seem 
to think it more important to be known as 
interesting and entertaining speakers than to 
be known as soul winners. 

When we lose sight of the immortality of 
man, and lose faith in the supernatural in re- 
ligion, then the soul will have lost much of 
its worth. But w T hen our thought dwells on 
the soul's eternal destiny, and we meditate 
on what God has done for the soul's redemp- 
tion, then we shall easily come to see that 
there is " nothing really great on earth but 
man, and nothing really great in man but his 
soul." 

We must meditate upon the necessity for 

a holy life if we would be soul winners. The 

matter of character is of first im- 

A Holy 

Llfe , portance in witnessing for God. 

When we come to help men and women to 
Christ it is much more necessary that we 
should be known to be godly than to be 
known as great scholars or great theolo- 
gians. The author of " The Price of Power " 
has a terse paragraph on this point : " We 



150 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

can never have power until we are implicitly 
obedient to all that we know of God's will 
regarding our own personal lives. The 
direction and force of external aim is always 
determined by the fashion of inner life, and 
power is always according to purity. If 
there is anything known to be unholy, un- 
clean, unworthy, yet willfully persisted in, we 
shall pray in vain for an enduement with the 
power of God. The one thing needed on 
the part of a man who realizes his lack of 
power is honestly to pray : ■ Search me, 
oh, God/ and to wait in the presence of 
God that He may do it." 

Some years ago a man was sent to India 
as a missionary. But when he undertook to 
learn the language he found himself utterly 
unable to master it. After trying for some 
time he decided to ask to be returned home. 
But when the people among whom he had 
lived heard that he was likely to be recalled 
they petitioned the missionary society not to 
remove him, declaring that he was more help- 
ful to them than any other missionary. For 
while he could not speak their language his 



MEDITATION AND SOUL WINNING 151 

life was such as to have a mighty influence 
for good over all the people of the community. 
He was permitted to remain, and lived and 
died among them. 

Unless we keep before us constantly, and 
meditate much on the highest New Testament 
standard of Christian living, we shall be likely 
to lose the keen edge from our Christian expe- 
rience and come to have fanatical notions 
concerning what constitutes a holy life. A 
little girl when asked the question in her 
Sunday-school class, "What is holiness ?" 
replied, " Holiness is the way our pastor 
lives." Holiness is Christ seen in us. And 
the probability is that the more Christ is seen 
in our words and actions the less we will have 
to say about it ourselves, and the mightier 
our influence will be to win others to Christ. 
When Moses came down from the mountain 
of quiet communion with God he did not 
need to tell the people that his face shone. 
And when we spend much time in holy fel- 
lowship with heaven the people among whom 
we move will know that we are h'eaven's mes- 
sengers, and there will be such authority and 



152 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

power in our words as will make us success- 
ful soul winners. 



21 IbEmn 

Jesus, the truth and power divine, 
Send forth these messengers of Thine ; 
Their hands confirm, their hearts inspire, 
And touch their lips with hallowed fire. 

Be Thou their mouth and wisdom, — Lord ; 
Thou, by the hammer of Thy word, 
The rocky hearts in pieces break, 
And bid the suns of thunder speak. 

To those who would their Lord embrace, 
Give them to preach the word of grace ; 
Sweetly their yielding bosoms move, 
And melt them with the fire of love. 

Let all with thankful hearts confess 
Thy welcome messengers of peace ; 
Thy power in their report be found, 
And let Thy feet behind them sound. 

— Charles Wesley. 



MEDITATION AND VISION 

Having the eyes of your under- 
standing enlightened. 

— Paul to the Epkesians. 



XII 
MEDITATION AND VISION 

MEDITATION takes the veil off 
truth. The highest peaks of truth 
are never reached either by anal- 
ysis or synthesis. Only he who has soul 
vision can see the way to the heights. And 
it was Plato who taught that the human 
mind has a native capacity for beatific vision. 
This is the soul's heritage, God created. Had 
it not been for sin the soul would have never 
lost its birthright. But sin has done its 
deadly work. Spiritual vision has been des- 
troyed in many a life. 

None knew better than King Solomon the 
truth of his own proverb, " Where there is no 
vision the people cast off restraint." When 
vision goes, then come rioting and wanton- 
ness and all ungodliness. Blindly, men rush 
to their own destruction. What need then 
for the restoration of spiritual vision to the 

J 55 



156 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

race ! If every Christian worker could say 
with the saintly Augustine, " Our whole work 
is to heal the eye of the heart by which we 
see God," what a new inspiration would come 
in all our work. 

Now the history of nations is in a very 
large sense the history of great men. Some- 
times it is a William the Con- 

Vision and 

Leadership quer or, then a Frederic the Great, 
then a Napoleon, but the crowning events of 
national history cluster about great person- 
alities. And what is the history of nations 
but a record of how God has been lifting the 
world out of darkness and chaos into light 
and order by the leadership of great men. 
There is a special sense in which God has al- 
ways had His man ready to turn the scale of 
events and fit them into His eternal purposes. 
We do not always know about the burning 
bush, or the Damascus road, or the celestial 
cross, or the Brescian convent, but God has 
a program, and there are no breaks in His 
plan. To His chosen leaders God always 
vouchsafes a vision, and happy is the man who 
is " not disobedient to the heavenly vision." 



MEDITATION AND VISION 157 

It is said of Moses that " he endured as 
seeing Him who is invisible." In the lonely 
mountains of Horeb, keeping watch over his 
father-in-law's flocks, he had ample time to 
ponder the great mysteries of life. And 
what a place for meditation ! " Were I a 
painter," said a certain modern traveller, 
" and could I illustrate Dante's Inferno, I 
would have pitched my camp-stool here and 
have filled my sketch-book, for there could 
never be wanting to the limner of the dark 
abyss of the pit, landscapes savage, terribly, 
unmeasurably sad, unutterably wild, unap- 
proachably grand and awful." Here it was 
that this man of destiny caught glimpses of 
the light ineffable, and saw the wild acacia 
aflame with the fire of God. He had a 
vision of duty and responsibility to God that 
transformed his life and made him the mes- 
senger and ambassador of heaven. And 
such a vision must have every true states- 
man and minister and leader. He may 
be a politician, but never a statesman until 
he gets the vision. He may foe a deacon, 
or an elder, or a priest, but never a flam- 



158 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

ing evangel for Christ until he gets the 
vision. 

Such a vision had Savonarola, the prophet 

of the renaissance, when yonder in the little 

Brescian convent he meditated 

A Vision 

Prophet upon the Word of God and prac- 

ticed the presence of God until his heart was 
aflame. He went down into the streets of 
the wicked city of Florence, and preached 
Christ and Him crucified. Lorenzo himself 
trembled at the words of this bold young 
monk who seemed to have no fear of the 
face of man. 

Such a vision, too, had Wendell Phillips, a 
graduate of Cambridge, who had every 
prospect for worldly success and greatness. 
But from his office window he had seen a 
fellow man kicked through the streets and 
hurried to the jail by a cruel, bloodthirsty 
mob. That night this young patrician law- 
yer could not sleep. There came before 
him a vision of a multitude of suffering 
human beings. Next morning he rose from 
his bed to dedicate his life to the liber- 
ation of the slave. And such a vision 



MEDITATION AND VISION 1 59 

must have every great reformer and leader 
of men. 

Now vision gives freshness and vigour to life. 

The life without vision is a life of drudgery 

and hopelessness. All its work 

Gives Freshness A 

and vigour i s commonplace and disappoint- 
ing. How many there are to-day to whom 
life seems to have lost its freshness ! If they 
live at all it is in the past. There is no mental 
or spiritual overflow in life. The vigour and 
joyousness of earlier days have departed. 
Life has no bloom. But this should never 
be true of the child of God. He has a 
fountain of perpetual youth. At the Feast 
of Tabernacles Jesus stood and cried saying, 
"If any man thirst let him come unto Me 
and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the 
Scripture hath said, from within him shall 
flow rivers of living water.' ' The saintly 
John MacNeil, in his "Spirit 
Filled Life," speaking of this re- 
markable Scripture, said : " This promise 
is for you. Has it then been verified in 
your life and experience? I£ not, why 
not? Is there not a cause? But note 



l6o THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

more closely its hugeness, its godlike vast- 
ness. Rivers ! not a tricklet or a babbling 
brook — by its babbling proclaiming its shal- 
lowness — or a stream, or a river, but Rivers ! 
What divine prodigality ! It is the Brisbane, 
the Clarence, the Hawkesbury, the Murray, 
the Murrumbidgee, the Tamar and the Der- 
went all rolled into one — Rivers ! By the 
widest, wildest stretch of imagination could it 
be said of you that i Rivers of living water ' 
are flowing from you — ' flowing/ mind you, 
1 flowing ' ? See the freshness, the freedom, 
and the spontaneity of the service ; no force- 
pump work about the flowing of the rivers ; 
none of the hard labour of the ■ soul in 
prison ' (Ps. cxlii. 7). When the rivers begin 
to flow the worker may sell his force-pump ; 
his prayer has been answered, ■ Bring my 
soul out of prison.' 

" It is worth noting the gradation in John 
iii., iv., vii. In John iii. 7 we have 'Life* in 
its beginnings — the new birth. In John iv. 14 
we have ' Life abundantly ' — ■ a well of water 
springing up.' The secret of the perennial 
upspringing is in the word ' drink-e-t-h ' ; 



MEDITATION AND VISION l6l 

'he that drinketh' — not takes a drink, but 
drinks and drinks and keeps on drinking — 
that man never thirsts ; for how can a man's 
soul be dry and thirsty with a well of water 
in it ? Many people are living in the third 
of John, — they have ■ Life/ but it is not 
strong and vigorous ; they are suffering from 
deficient vitality, — when Jesus wants them to 
be in the fourth enjoying ■ Life Abundantly.' 
The difference in the two experiences is well 
illustrated in the case of Hagar. In Genesis 
xxi. 14 we read that Abraham gave Hagar a 
1 bottle of water ' and sent her away. As she 
wandered in the wilderness 'the water was 
spent in the bottle' (verse fifteen). But in 
verse nineteen, ' God opened her eyes, and 
she saw a well of water.' There are bottle 
Christians, and there are well Christians." 

Vision makes us conscious of the nearness 

of God. The great need of the age is a new 

God consciousness. We need 

Our Great 

a revival of mysticism in its best 
sense. There is a doctrine taught by the 
Roman Catholic Church which maintains 
that the bread and wine of the sacrament 



1 62 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

become the real flesh and blood of Christ. 
We need a renewal — not of the doctrine of 
transubstantiation, but of the doctrine of the 
real presence. Too many live now as if 
under an empty heaven, forgetting that we 
are " compassed about with so great a cloud 
of witnesses," and that " we are made a spec- 
tacle unto the world, both to angels and to 
men." Did not Jesus say, " Lo, I am with 
you alway " ? Did not He say, " If a man 
love Me, he will keep My word : and My 
Father will love him, and we will come unto 
him, and make our abode with him " ? If 
we are His children the Lord proposes to 
keep us company in every hour of life, but 
how often we forget this and lose the con- 
sciousness of His presence. " He walks as 
in the presence of God," said good Jeremy 
Taylor, " that converses with Him in fre- 
quent prayer and frequent communion ; that 
runs to Him in all his necessities ; that asks 
counsel of Him in all his doubtings ; that 
opens all his wants to Him ; that weeps be- 
fore Him for his sins ; that asks remedy and 
support for his weakness ; that fears Him as 



MEDITATION AND VISION 163 

a judge ; reverences Him as a Lord, and 
obeys Him as a Father." How much brighter 
and better life would be for many of us if we 
practiced the presence of God, and lived in 
the consciousness of His smile. 

Vision gives purity of intention. Only 
when we begin to see things as they really 
punty of are can we be at our best. A 

wrong estimate of life will al- 
ways mean a wrong motive ; and a wrong 
motive in life means eternal disaster. It was 
while reading and meditating upon that 
immortal passage from " Holy Living and 
Dying" that John Wesley was led to the 
supreme surrender of all his powers to God. 
Let us ponder it here, praying God that as 
we do so we may have such a vision as will 
purify every motive of our lives. 

"This grace (purity of intention) is so ex- 
cellent that it sanctifies the most common 
actions of our life ; and yet so necessary that, 
without it, the very best actions of our devo- 
tion are imperfect and vicious. For, as to 
know the end distinguishes a man from a 
beast, so to choose a good end distinguishes 



164 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

him from an evil man. The praise is not in 
the thing done, but in the manner of its 
doing. If a man visits his sick friend, and 
watches at his pillow for charity's sake and 
because of his old affection, we approve it ; 
but if he does it in hope of a legacy he is a 
vulture, and only watches for the carcass. 
The same things are honest and dishonest ; 
the manner of doing them, the end of the 
design, makes the separation. 

" Holy intention is to the actions of a man 
that which the soul is to the body, or form to 
its matter, or the root to the tree, or the sun 
to the world, or the fountain to a river, or the 
base to a pillar ; for without these the body 
is a dead trunk, the matter is sluggish, the 
tree is a block, the world is darkness, the 
river is quickly dry, the pillar rushes itato 
flatness and a ruin ; and the action is sinful, 
or unprofitable and vain. 

" In every action reflect upon the end ; and 
in your undertaking it consider why you do 
it, and what you propound to yourself for a 
reward. 

" Let every action and concernment be be- 



MEDITATION AND VISION 165 

gun with prayer, that God would not only 
bless the action but sanctify your pur- 
pose ; and make an oblation of the action to 
God. 

"It is likely our hearts are pure and our 
intentions spotless when we are not solicitous 
of the opinion and censures of men, but only 
that what we do be our duty and accepted 
of God. For our eyes will certainly be fixed 
there from whence we expect our reward ; 
and if we desire that God should approve us 
it is a sign we do His work and expect Him 
our paymaster. 

"He loves virtue for God's sake and its own, 
that loves and honours it wherever it is to be 
seen. But he that is envious or angry at a 
virtue that is not his own, at the perfection 
or excellency of his neighbour, is not covet- 
ous of the virtue, but of its reward and 
reputation ; and then his intentions are 
polluted. It was a great ingenuity in Moses 
that wished all the people might be prophets ; 
but if he had designed his own honour he 
would have prophesied alone. * But he that 
desires only that the work of God and religion 



1 66 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

shall go on is pleased with it, whosoever is 
the instrument. 

"If we are not solicitous concerning the 
instruments and means of our actions, but 
use those means which God hath laid before 
us with resignation, indifference, and thank- 
fulness, it is a good sign that we are rather 
intent upon the end of God's glory than our 
own convenience or temporal satisf action.' ' 



B ©ra^er 
Almighty God, we thank Thee for voices 
that come from other worlds, bringing sweet 
music and saving gospels. We know Thy 
word when we hear it. There is none like 
it; that voice is as a mighty rushing wind 
from heaven. May we always listen for the 
voices from beyond, and reply to them with 
obedience and thankfulness. Thou hast set 
us in a great school : many are the teachers 
sent from God : Thou hast taught us on 
every scale and according to every method ; 
Thou hast addressed Thyself to our under- 
standing, and our love, and our conscience, 
and our immortality. In this great school 
we have had prophets, mighty men gifted 



MEDITATION AND VISION 167 

with penetrating vision, charged with the 
thunders of eloquence, gentle souls that wept 
with us in our distress, mighty souls that 
could deliver us in our despair. If we have 
listened to common teachers when we might 
have listened to prophets, the good God of 
the prophets forgive us. Enable us always to 
listen only to the great, the tender, the wise, 
the sympathetic ; may we shed off from us all 
weakness, frivolity, pettiness, and cry mightily 
after that which is sublime, divine. The Lord 
give us sight, clear and penetrating ; the Lord 
give us eyes in our heart. 

— Joseph Parker. 



MEDITATION AND ACTION 

I can do all things in Him that 
strengtheneth me. 

— Paul 



XIII 

MEDITATION AND ACTION 

" 1^ "T OW watch me burn out for God," 
^^ said Henry Martyn. He had been 
talking with his Lord in the secret 
place until his soul burned within him. He 
had been quiet before God until his heart was 
aflame. Wise old Pythagoras knew the value 
of this quiet waiting, for he required each of 
his pupils to live for a year without once ask- 
ing a question or making an explanation. 
But how infinitely more it means to the 
disciple of Jesus to wait quietly before his 
Lord. After such a waiting action is in- 
evitable. 

How can one who has talked with God 
and heard the voice of the unresting Christ 
„. „ do otherwise than go forward 

His Presence ° 

Means Action when he CQmes frQm the p res . 

ence Chamber ? There is an atmosphere of 

resistless enthusiasm wherever the Son of 

171 



172 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

God goes. His presence transforms every 
valley of dry bones into a living unconquera- 
ble army. It was one of Napoleon's veteran 
soldiers, a sergeant of the guard, to whom 
Napoleon was everything, who said to a 
newly enlisted man for whom he had formed 
a friendship, " The Emperor is come ! The 
Emperor is here ! " And the young soldier 
said, " How do you know, sergeant? I have 
just been down to the general's quarters and 
I have seen nothing of him." And the ser- 
geant said : " Don't you see that all the world 
is up and stirring? You don't understand, 
but he is here. I feel it in the soles of my 
feet. When he is not here everything limps, 
but now, see down there ! Everything is 
moving. Look at those expresses galloping 
along the road. The Emperor is comer" 
There is no loitering or limping where Jesus 
is. His presence transforms the hesitating 
soul into a hero, the sleeping host into a 
mighty army. You can always tell when the 
King has come. 

Behind every successful life must be some 
great purpose. This is what Proclus the 



MEDITATION AND ACTION 1 73 

Athenian meant when he said, " Life is never 
at its best until it is caught in the upward 
sweep of some great enthusi- 
Purpose asm." Such a purpose is usually 

born in the quiet place of meditation. In how 
many lives work becomes drudgery simply 
because behind the toil there is no high aim. 
That is not God's way for us. His plan is to 
sanctify every honourable occupation and 
have us perform daily duties with a conscious- 
ness of His presence, and for His glory. 

"Forenoon, and afternoon, and night; — Forenoon, 
And afternoon, and night; Forenoon, and — what? 
The empty song repeats itself. No more ? 
Yea, that is life ; make this forenoon sublime, 
This afternoon a psalm, this night a prayer, 
And time is conquered, and thy crown is won." 

There are some things essential to the high- 
est and noblest action. Foremost among 
Peace these is peace. At first thought 

this may seem a paradox, but 
peace is not simply stillness. Dr. J. H. Jowett 
well says : " Peace is life, it is motion, it is 
movement without friction. We may find its 
fitting symbol in some great engine house 



174 THE L0ST ART 0F MEDITATION 

when the monster is at work and every part 
cooperates with every other part in smooth 
and perfect communion. Peace is not found 
when every instrument in the orchestra is 
silent, but when every instrument is making 
its own contribution, and the result is rich 
and perfect harmony." 

Now meditation takes the grit and sand 
from the axle, and makes the wheels of life 
run more smoothly. Meditation removes the 
discordant note from the orchestra and makes 
the music perfect. Meditation gives us a new 
consciousness of the presence of Him whom 
the winds and the sea obey, and so brings 
peace. It is the presence of Christ that elim- 
inates worry and distraction from the life. 
" Peace," said Jesus, " I leave with you, My 
peace I give unto you: not as the world 
giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart 
be troubled, neither let it be afraid." Where 
He is, peace abides. It is then that we do 
our best work. 

Then, too, joy is essential to the noblest 
action. Henry Churchill King, speaking of 
the relation of joy to the will, puts it thus : 



MEDITATION AND ACTION 1 75 

" The relation is close and simple. Joy di- 
rectly increases our vitality. Greater vitality 
gives greater sense of reality. 

Joy Essential 

This means stronger convictions. 
Of convictions purposes are born. And con- 
viction and purpose make influence cer- 
tain. . . . An ultimate message of hope 
is essential to the strongest living.' ' 

And herein may be found the reason why 
Jesus has so much to say about joy. With 
Him it is vital to aggressive Christian service. 
In spite of the strain of sadness — the sadness 
of farewell — that runs through that remark- 
able sixteenth chapter of St. John's Gospel, 
the note of joy is sounded loud and clear : 
11 Ask and receive, that your joy may be 
full. . . . Your joy no man taketh from 
you. . . . Your sorrow shall be turned 
into joy. . . . In the world ye shall have 
tribulation : but be of good cheer ; I have 
overcome the world.' ' A life filled with the 
joy of the Lord is almost certain to be a life 
of intensest activity in doing good. Paul 
knew this and, in his letters, so often exhorts 
his converts to " rejoice in the Lord." In- 



1 76 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

deed he declares that the kingdom of heaven 
is " righteousness and peace and joy in the 
Holy Ghost." And knowing Paul's ideals 
for the kingdom of God we must see how 
intimate in his mind was the relation between 
joy and action. 

Then, too, love is necessary to the noblest 

action. Where all else fails love will win. 

Love will make opportunity. 

Love Essential 

Love for God will keep the 
heart motive pure and the life clean. There 
is no motive power like love. It is irresist- 
ible. Nothing can stand before love — not 
even death. 

" Sink down ye separating hills ! 
Let sin and death remove ! 
Tis love that drives my chariot wheels, 
And death must yield to love." 

Yonder in Northern India stand the two 
great cities of Lucknow and Cawnpore. Be- 
tween them lies forty miles of densely popu- 
lated country. Just before the terrible Sepoy 
rebellion broke out, a little English woman 
left her baby girl in charge of the nurse at 
the residency in Lucknow and went to 



MEDITATION AND ACTION 1 77 

Cawnpore to visit another English family. 
While she was there the rebellion broke like 
a cloudburst over all Northern India. Next 
morning after that first night of terror this 
little mother applied to the commanding 
officer in Cawnpore for a pass to Lucknow. 
The officer looked at her in amazement and 
said, " My poor woman, I cannot give you a 
pass to Lucknow. I couldn't get there my- 
self with an army. Between here and there 
are one hundred and fifty thousand Sepoy 
fiends bent on the murder of every English 
resident." But the mother was not to be 
turned aside. She secured a native cart, 
and, disguised as a Hindoo woman, started 
at midnight for Lucknow. She threaded her 
way through the murderous crowds until she 
reached the gates of the city. Then it 
seemed as if her journey had only begun. 
General Havelock afterwards fought for 
three days in the streets before he reached 
the residency. But this brave little mother 
pushed her way through the frenzied throng 
until she came to the residency and clasped 
her child to her breast. What led that 



178 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

mother to defy death in its most horrible 
form? What, but love? There is no idle 
waiting where love is. There is no cowardice 
where love is. 

But peace and joy and love thrive best 
when time is given to meditation upon the 
promises and goodness of God. It is then 
that the Holy Spirit has opportunity to 
speak to the soul, and pour out His gifts. 
It is then that He quickens and strengthens 
all these virtues and thus prepares us for the 
highest and noblest service. Savonarola 
waited in the quiet of the Brescian convent 
until peace and joy and love flooded his 
soul, and the presence of God so enriched 
and empowered his life, that the multitudes 
thronged to hear him, while princes and 
popes trembled at his words of fire. 



MEDITATION AND ACTION 1 79 

U prater 

Oh, Lord Jesus, Thou art nearer to me 
now than to Thy disciples in the days of 
Thy flesh ! 

Closer to me than breathing, 
Nearer than hands and feet. 

Thou art the constant friend, and Thou art 
the Light of the world. Then I shall walk 
steadily in Thy light. Then I shall not 
stumble or stray or lose my way. Thy com- 
pany is better than that of princes, and Thy 
guidance surer than the stars. Unfalter- 
ingly would I keep step with Thee, even 
though the path Thou takest leads to the 
Garden and the Cross, knowing that Thou 
wilt lead at last to the daybreak that is 
eternal and the glory that is undimmed. 



HELPS TO MEDITATION 

Meditate upon these things: 

Give thyself wholly to them. 

— Paul to Timothy, 



XIV 
HELPS TO MEDITATION 

THE art of meditation must be learned. 
There is no possibility of stumbling 
upon it by chance. There is no royal 
course of ease to its gateway. Its blessed 
paths are trodden only by those who have 
toiled along many a tiresome road. But God, 
in His goodness, has provided so many helps 
for him who seeks this way that all who want 
to know its joy may do so. 

There is one Companion and only one for 
the pathway of meditation, and that is the 
Qne Holy Spirit. His company is 

companion indispensable. He knows the 
way and is ever willing to guide us. " Some 
place their religion in books,' ' says Thomas a 
Kempis, " some in images, some in the pomp 
and splendour of external, worship, but 
some with illuminated understandings hear- 

183 



184 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

eth what the Holy Spirit speaketh in their 
hearts." 

His mission is to reveal Christ and so open 
the eyes of our understanding that the cruci- 
fied and risen Saviour shall be all in all to us. 
He makes us sensible, too, of the nearness 
and reality of the spiritual world. The more 
we have of the Spirit's companionship the 
more responsive we are to spiritual things. 
The eye sees more clearly the deep things of 
God, and the ear is more sensitive to the 
voice of God. 

It is said that at the siege of Lucknow the 
first person to know of the near approach of 
the British troups, marching to the rescue of 
the city, was a little girl whose senses had 
become so keen through long illness that 
she heard the highland pipers while they 
were yet miles away. And he whose spirit- 
ual senses have been made keen by compan- 
ionship with the Holy Spirit in hours of med- 
itation and prayer will have such keenness of 
spiritual sight and hearing that he will sense 
victory from a distance, and will always 
recognize the earliest signs of gospel triumph. 



HELPS TO MEDITATION 185 

The Holy Spirit makes use of the Bible in 
the hour of meditation. " Behold, I will 

The Bible P° UI * ° Ut M ? S P lrit UIlt0 J" 011 ' l 

will make known My words unto 
you." " But when the Comforter is come," 
said Jesus, " which is the Holy Spirit, whom 
the Father will send in My name, He shall 
teach you all things, and bring all things to 
your remembrance, whatsoever I have said 
unto you." George Matheson, in his inimi- 
table and devout way, says : " There are 
words lying in thy memory which are not 
yet revealed to thee — holy words, sacred 
words, words learned at a mothers knee, 
but whose beauty is by thee as yet unfelt, 
unseen. When the Spirit comes the old 
words will come to thee as something new. 
Thou shalt marvel at what thou hast passed 
by unnoticed on the way. Thou shalt won- 
der at the richness of the Lord's prayer, at the 
power of the Sermon on the Mount, at the 
tenderness of the story of a prodigal son. 
Thou shalt be surprised at the melody of old 
psalms, thrilled by the novelty of familiar 
incidents, stirred by the freshness of well- 



1 86 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

known passages. To him who is a new 
creature old things are all made new; the 
mind that was empty to the eye of sense, 
to the spirit reveals gold." 

The Holy Spirit makes use of good books 

to enrich the hour of meditation. There are 

a number of spiritual classics 

Good Books 

which should be in the home of 
every growing Christian. Prominent among 
these is "The Imitation of Christ " by Thomas 
a Kempis. In spite of its deep note of pessi- 
mism and its dark pictures of this world, yet, 
outside the Bible, perhaps no other book has 
been such a permanent inspiration to real 
spiritual worship and heart devotion. 

That was a beautiful tribute paid by George 
Eliot to this book when, in " The Mill on the 
Floss," she says: 

" This small, old-fashioned book, for which 
you need pay only sixpence at a book-stall, 
works miracles to this day, turning bitter 
waters into sweetness ; while expensive ser- 
mons and treatises, newly issued, leave all 
things as they were before. It was written 
down by a hand that waited for the heart's 



HELPS TO MEDITATION 187 

prompting ; it is the chronicle of a solitary, 
hidden anguish, struggle, trust, and triumph 
— not written on velvet cushions to teach 
endurance to those who are treading with 
bleeding feet on the stones. And so it re- 
mains to all time a lasting record of human 
needs and human consolations ; the voice of 
a brother who, ages ago, felt, suffered and 
renounced . . . with a fashion of speech 
different from ours, but under the same silent, 
far-off heavens, the same strivings, the same 
failures, the same weariness." 

Every Christian home should have, if pos- 
sible, a supply of these devotional books, a 
list of which can be secured from any relig- 
ious publishing house, and a part of the quiet 
hour should be given to their perusal. It is 
to the shame of many Christian homes that 
one finds in the home library so much of the 
sentimental and trashy fiction of the day, and 
so little of the great classical spiritual litera- 
ture of the centuries. 

The Holy Spirit uses the biographies of 
godly men and women to make helpful the 
hour of meditation. In Auguste Comte's 



1 88 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

calendar he proposes that each day we should 

meditate on the life of some benefactor of 

humanity to whom that day's 

Biography 

thoughts should be devoted. 
Here and there on the mountain peaks of 
Christian history have stood men and women 
of mighty faith in God, and to whom God has 
revealed Himself in wonderful power and 
blessing. To study these lives and meditate 
on their devotion and heroism will almost 
surely steady wavering feet and lift up hands 
that hang down. 

Take, for instance, the life of John the 
Scot, who wrote, " There are as many un- 
veilings of God as there are saintly souls." 
Living in the days of the Norse invaders, 
and when European civilization was at low 
ebb, this Irish scholar was " one of the torch 
bearers in the long line of teachers of mys- 
tical religion." His Christian polemics might 
be studied with great spiritual profit in our 
own day. Some things will be found that 
have upon them the mustiness of the dark- 
ened age in which he lived, but in many 
things he was far in advance of his time. 



HELPS TO MEDITATION 1 89 

His voice was lifted against the encroaching 
materialism and the corruption of the Church. 
He was condemned by church councils, and 
his writings confiscated, but he was one of 
God's own heroes. He was a voice crying 
in the wilderness and finding little response 
in those dark, dark days. " But there was in 
him," says one, "a loftiness of spirit, a bold- 
ness of vision, a virile idealism, which was 
sure to be an inspiration to many noble minds 
in later ages who were, as he was, consecrated 
to the service of the Invisible Church." 

And the history of the Christian Church 
will be found to contain the record of many 
a noble life the study of which will greatly 
enrich the hours of meditation, and leave its 
permanent spiritual impress on the life. 



21 prater 

And now, O Blessed Spirit, teach me the 
way of holy meditation ! Then shall I have 
the open vision. I seem now so often to 
have to feel my way in the dark. Give me 
the undimmed eye of faith. 



190 THE LOST ART OF MEDITATION 

I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies, 
No sudden rending of this veil of clay ; 

No angel visitant, no opening skies, 
But take the dimness of my soul away. 

Too often spiritual things appear as mere 
shadows. May I begin to see that they are 
the great realities of life. Show me, O Lord, 
how to open the door of heavenly contempla- 
tion, and then, in the "secret of His pres- 
ence/ ' I shall come to know better the reality 
and authority of the spiritual. Make me a 
mystic in the highest and best sense of that 
much misunderstood word. May I come to 
know the hidden things of God. Thou hast 
said that " the secret of the Lord is with them 
that fear Him." Thou knowest, O Lord, 
that I fear Thee and love Thee. But I want 
to know Thee better and love Thee more. 
Therefore I wait at Thy feet, and plead for 
Thy mercy. Be gracious, Lord, even unto 
me, and "let the words of my mouth and 
the meditation of my heart be acceptable in 
Thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my 
redeemer." 



CLINICAL STUDIES OF CHRISTIANITY 



HAROLD BEGBIE 

Twice-Born Men 

A Clinic in Regeneration, 

ismo, cloth, net $1.25. 

A footnote in narrative to Prof. Wm. James* "Tne 
Varieties of Religious Experience." 

Studies in the phenomena of conversion from the stand- 
point of the student of human nature. 

Prof. William James, of Harvard, says: "Mr. Begbie's 
book is a wonderful set of stories splendidly worked up. It 
certainly needs no preface from me. I might as well call my 
book a foot-note to his. I am proud of the dedication and 
t>i the references and I wish the book a great success." 

J. Wilbur Chapman says: "One of the most thrillingly 
interesting books I have ever read. I could wish that every 
Christian might read the book and receive as much per- 
sonal spiritual profit as has come to me." 

HORACE EMORY WARNER, Ph.D. 

The Psychology of the Christian Life 

8vo, cloth, net $1.50. 

An unusually scholarly and at the same time scripturally 
enforced study of the Christian life in which the usual ter- 
minology is replaced by descriptions psychological and scien- 
tific. The author has chosen a very nearly clear field and 
while many have written of the psychology of religious ex- 
perience. Dr. Warner confines himself to the Christian 
and Evangelical field, thus making an invaluable contribution 
both to Christian scholarship and the philosophy of religion. 

WILLIAM ALEXANDER GRIST 

The Historic Christ in the Faith of To-day 

8vo, cloth, net $2.50. 

This work on the central figure of Christianity occupies a 
ground midway between a regular Christology on the one 
hand and a biography of Christ on the other. It is conserva- 
tive in the best sense of the word, and is a very distinctly 
noteworthy contribution to the literature on the subject, 

JOHN TIMOTHY STONE, D D. 

Recruiting for Christ 

Hand to Hand Methods with Men. 
i2fflo, Cloth, net $1.00. 

The chapters which comprise this book were given as 
Lectures before a class conducted under the auspices of 
the Federation of Church Clubs and Brotherhood in Chicago. 
Dr. Stone speaks both with the spirit of personal work and 
the best methods of getting at it in an unusually vigorous and 
wholesome way. The bool? differs absolutely, from the ster- 
eotyped and more or less hackneyed collection of special cases 
and equally stereotyped selections, and will be found^ inval- 
uable to arouse a sense of responsibility in this subject as 
well as furnishing wise directions for its pursuit. g 



ESSAYS, ADDRESSES, Etc. 



JAMES I. VANCE 

Tendency : The Effect of Trend and Drix\ 
in the Development of Life. 

i2mo, cloth, net $1.25. 

"Aims primarily at helping young men so that they will 
turn their lives in the right direction at the very start. 
Ihese discussions are alive. They are full of suggestive 
thoughts. They cannot fail to inspire. They deal with the 
very conditions in which men find themselves, and they are 
apt. They are bound to do good.' — C. B. World, 

/. H. JOWETT 

The Transfigured Church 

i2mo, cloth, net $1.25. 

A truly remarkable portrayal of what the Church might 
be if it fully availed itself of all the forces and powers at its 
disposal. The great Birmingham preacher is seen in this vol- 
ume at his very best and the remarkable skill in expression, 
in clarity of thought and breadth of sympathy are manifest 
on every page. 

HENRY W. CLARK 

Laws of the Inner Kingdom 

i2mo, cloth, net $1.25. 

"This is a distinctly Christian study of the laws of 
spiritual life and experience. The bock is thoughtful, rev- 
erent, sincere and scholarly and will be of profit to the 
one who reads it carefully." — Journal and Messenger. 

PERCY C. AINS WORTH 

The Pilgrim Church and Other Sermons 

i2mo, cloth, net $1.25. 

Sir Robertson Nicoll says: "Every page and almost every 
sentence is striking. This is a book which must inevitably 
find its way into the hands of every preacher worthy of the 
name and multitudes who are not preachers will find in it 
the help that they need. It is truly a golden book." 

W. L. WATKINSON 

The Fatal Barter and Other Sermons 

\2mo t cloth, net $1.00. 

"Reveals the secret of the eagerness with which the au- 
thor is heard in his homeland and in this country, at North- 
field and elsewhere. He is evangelical in his teaching, loyal 
to the Scriptures, but his spirit is modern, and one of the 
chief charms of his sermons is in the > application of the 
changeless tnith to the needs and conditions of our day."— 
Lutheran Observer. 



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